Red-necked Phalarope (f)
Whilst photographing Red-throated Divers and Otters in Shetland recently I surprisingly saw a pair of birds casually bobbing along towards me - Red-necked Phalaropes to my surprise! They began feeding close to the rocks and they remained there most of the day, refuelling after their long journey from Peru.
Where the Shetland birds over-wintered was a mystery until in 2012 Malcie Smith micro-tagged a small number and managed to re-catch one in 2013. The data revealed it had made a 16,000 mile round trip to the coast of Peru and back to their breeding grounds on Shetland. Amazing for a bird weighing 25g. All this info was gleamed from simply measuring time of day and number of hours of daylight falling on the chip. From this info, only one location on the planet would fit the bill for each combined measurement.
This is the female of the pair.
The male will bring up the young, allowing the female the possibility to mate with more than one male. This gives them the best chance of survival in a rather short breeding season - arriving late May/June and departing in July/early August. There are no nests near where these were filmed, so was a complete surprise to see them so closely and for most of the day.
Red-necked Phalarope (f)
Whilst photographing Red-throated Divers and Otters in Shetland recently I surprisingly saw a pair of birds casually bobbing along towards me - Red-necked Phalaropes to my surprise! They began feeding close to the rocks and they remained there most of the day, refuelling after their long journey from Peru.
Where the Shetland birds over-wintered was a mystery until in 2012 Malcie Smith micro-tagged a small number and managed to re-catch one in 2013. The data revealed it had made a 16,000 mile round trip to the coast of Peru and back to their breeding grounds on Shetland. Amazing for a bird weighing 25g. All this info was gleamed from simply measuring time of day and number of hours of daylight falling on the chip. From this info, only one location on the planet would fit the bill for each combined measurement.
This is the female of the pair.
The male will bring up the young, allowing the female the possibility to mate with more than one male. This gives them the best chance of survival in a rather short breeding season - arriving late May/June and departing in July/early August. There are no nests near where these were filmed, so was a complete surprise to see them so closely and for most of the day.