Dance of the Red Necked Phalaropes

2021
Oil on board
4x3ft

Red Necked Phalaropes are Arctic breeding birds with a small population spending the summer in Shetland which is at the southern end of their breeding range. For many years it was believed the Shetland birds were part of a NW Scandinavian population but recent developments in the size of geolocator tags led to a very interesting discovery made by my friend Malcie Smith and Shetland ornithologist Dave Okill A Shetland bird was fitted with a tiny tag and recaptured the following year and to everyone’s complete surprise it was discovered that The Shetland phalaropes travel across the Atlantic via Iceland and Greenland, south down the eastern seaboard of the US, across the Caribbean and Mexico, ending up off the coast of Ecuador and Peru returning again in the spring to breed. A round trip of about 16,000 miles.

Each summer I try to spend some time in the presence of the phalaropes and in this painting These birds dance as they wheel around on the surface of the water in search of food and as if in celebration life itself.
Roles are reversed in these birds with the females donning brightly coloured plumage and males being mire drab in colour.
After mating the female abandons the nest to mate with other males, leaving each male with the responsibility of rearing the young.