Red-necked phalarope

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The red-necked phalarope (Phalaropus lobatus), also known as the northern phalarope and hyperborean phalarope,<ref name="Avibase" /> is a small wader. This phalarope breeds in the Arctic regions of North America and Eurasia. It is migratory, and, unusually for a wader, winters at sea on tropical oceans.

TaxonomyEdit

File:Phalaropus lobatus - Red-necked Phalarope - XC109659.ogg

Phalaropus lobatus - Red-necked Phalarope (song)

In 1743, the English naturalist George Edwards included an illustration and a description of the red-necked phalarope in the first volume of his A Natural History of Uncommon Birds. He used the English name "The coot-footed tringa". Edwards based his hand-coloured etching on a specimen that had been collected off the coast of Maryland.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> When in 1758, the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the tenth edition, he placed the red-necked phalarope with the phalaropes and sandpipers in the genus Tringa. Linnaeus included a brief description, coined the binomial name Tringa lobata and cited Edwards' work.<ref>Template:Cite book On page 148 Linnaeus spells the specific epithet as tobata. He corrects this to lobata on page 824.</ref> The red-necked phalarope is now placed in the genus Phalaropus that was introduced by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson in 1760.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref name=ioc>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The English and genus names come through French phalarope and scientific Latin Phalaropus from Ancient Greek phalaris, "coot", and pous, "foot". Coots and phalaropes both have lobed toes. The specific lobatus is Neo-Latin for "lobed".<ref name=OED>Template:Cite OED</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> The species is monotypic: no subspecies are recognised.<ref name=ioc/>

DescriptionEdit

The red-necked phalarope is about Template:Convert in length, with lobed toes and a straight, fine bill. The breeding female is predominantly dark grey above, with a chestnut neck and upper breast, black face and white throat. They have a white wing stripe which helps distinguish this bird from the similar Wilson's phalarope. The breeding male is a duller version of the female. They have lobed toes to assist with their swimming. Young birds are grey and brown above, with buff underparts and a black patch through the eye. In winter, the plumage is essentially grey above and white below, but the black eyepatch is always present. They have a sharp call described as a whit or twit.

Standard measurements<ref name=BOC /><ref name=Sibley />
Total Body Length	Template:Convert
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Behaviour and ecologyEdit

BreedingEdit

File:Phalaropus lobatus MWNH 0244.JPG

Eggs, from the Museum Wiesbaden

Female red-necked phalaropes are generally larger than males, though there is some overlap between small-bodied females and large-bodied males.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> The females pursue and fight over males, and will defend their mate from other females until the clutch is complete and the male begins incubation.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite journal</ref> The males perform all incubation and chick-rearing activities, while the females may attempt to find another mate.<ref name=":0" /> Females may lay multiple clutches per year if her original nest fails or there are an excess of adult males in the breeding population.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Once it becomes too late in the breeding season to start new nests, females begin their southward migration, leaving the males to incubate the eggs and look after the young.Template:Citation needed

File:Redneckedphalaropechick.jpg

Chick

The nest is a grass-lined depression at the top of a small mound. Clutch size is usually four splotchy olive-buff eggs, but can be fewer. Incubation is about 20 days.<ref name=BOC/> The young are precocial, and mainly feed themselves and are able to fly within 20 days of hatching.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

FeedingEdit

When feeding, a red-necked phalarope will often swim in a small, rapid circle, forming a small whirlpool. This behaviour is thought to aid feeding by raising food from the bottom of shallow water. The bird will reach into the centre of the vortex with its bill, plucking small insects or crustaceans caught up therein. On the open ocean, they are often found where converging currents produce upwellings. During migration, some flocks stop over on the open waters at the mouth of the Bay of Fundy to take advantage of food stirred up by tidal action.

MigrationEdit

Almost all of the nonbreeding season is spent in open water. As this species rarely comes into contact with humans, it can be unusually tame.Template:Citation needed

StatusEdit

The red-necked phalarope is one of the species to which the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA) applies.

File:Phalaropus lobatus copula-pjt.jpg

Mating

In Britain and IrelandEdit

The red-necked phalarope is a rare and localised breeding species in Ireland and Britain, which lie on the extreme edge of its world range. The most reliable place for them is Shetland, particularly the Loch of Funzie on Fetlar, with a few birds breeding elsewhere in Scotland in the Outer Hebrides (e.g. at Loch na Muilne, where a "phalarope watchpoint" has been set up) and sometimes the Scottish Mainland in Ross-shire or Sutherland. They have also bred in western Ireland since about 1900, where the population reached a peak of about 50 pairs. There have been very few breeding records in Ireland since the 1970s, but breeding was reported from County Mayo in 2015, involving a male and three females.

The tracking of a tagged bird from Fetlar unexpectedly revealed that it wintered with a North American population in the tropical Pacific Ocean; it took a Template:Convert round trip across the Atlantic via Iceland and Greenland, then south down the Eastern seaboard of America, across the Caribbean and Mexico, before ending up off the coast of Ecuador and Peru. For this reason, it is suspected that the Shetland population could be an offshoot of a North American population rather than the geographically closer Scandinavian population that is believed to winter in the Arabian Sea.<ref name=smith2014/>