We had a day of excitement on site on Wednesday this week, with the presence of Langford's best bird in a long time....a stunning male red-necked phalarope, which spent most of the day delighting staff, volunteers and visitors on Phase 1.
The bird was first discovered by volunteer Rob Werran at 21.40 on Tuesday evening, just as it was getting dark. Naturally, I hurried up to the reserve first thing on Wednesday morning and as luck would have it, the bird was still there feeding away on the Phase 1 islands. In fact it was pretty much the first bird I saw, as I came through the gate onto Phase 1, showing extremely well among the pochard and tufted duck loafing in the background.
So after getting the news out on Birdguides and frantically phoning around everyone, the hoards started to arrive and with the bird remaining in the area until 20.36 that evening, up to 100 people managed to see it from the ideal vantage point at the Beach Hut.
Red-necked phalaropes are beautiful and interesting little birds. They have a very restricted breeding range in the UK, with the stronghold in the Shetland Islands and a few on the Western Isles. They are a diminutive little wader, with a body length of only around 18cm and wingspan no more than around 35cm. In the UK, the phalaropes breed around lochs, feeding on insects gleaned from the water's surface, whilst performing their characteristic spinning action. They are migratory and spend the winter months at sea. The species has a rather global breeding range over much of the northern Holarctic, with wintering areas in mostly tropical seas around South America, Arabian peninsula and around Indonesia. Famously, a bird tagged on Shetland wintered in seas off Ecuador. Their scientific name, Phalaropus lobatus means 'lobed coot foot', and indeed they do have lobes between their toes to assist with swimming.
Most interestingly however, phalaropes have a reversed sexual dimorphism. The females are larger and more brightly coloured than the males, who do all the incubation and caring for the young. The female deserts the male after hatching and may go on to mate a second time, again leaving the male to incubate and care for chicks.
Overall, they are fabulous little birds and we are very pleased to have had one drop in for the day!
Thanks to everyone who manned the site on Wednesday and hope everyone enjoyed the bird.
Red-necked phalarope - not our bird though! Chris Gomersall (rspb-images.com)