red-necked phalarope

These usually rare paleartic migrant were seen in their hundreds on a waterbird count earlier this year just a short distance off the shore.

More Rednecked Phalaropes. Another birder stopped nearby and was looking at this marsh area through binoculars. The pond was a bit too far away for me to ID birds in the field with just my camera, so I walked over and asked her if these were perhaps Phalaropes and, if so, whether she knew which...

A good lifer today Chris. Distant and heavily cropped.

Standing out there on the road, with no permission to go out into the refuge, I suspected there was a whole flock of Phalaropes on the little pond in the dunes. But I'd never seen a whole flock of them together before, so could this be something else? I asked another birder standing nearby, but...

This species was among the most abundant shore birds breeding in the Nome, Alaska area at the end of May and beginning of June. It moved about largely in small groups. It both waded and swam in the shallows of sheltered-marine/brackish and fresh-water bodies including rivers.

Just after 5 AM, the bird was preening, hence the blurred rear end.

Would you expect to find a juv. plumage Red-necked Phalarope in a flock of Semipalmated Sandpipers, on a beach ? Me neither. One of last year's thrills, discovered only on the computer !

My quest for a decent image of one of these continues, after yesterday's visitor to my local reserve failed to venture close. It was eventually scared off by one of the local peregrines, which took a dunlin. So far I've managed to dip them on Fetlar and see them from a country mile away on...