All species › Waders, gulls and terns › Sandpipers and allies › Wilson's Phalarope
Position in the tree Birds Aves › Birds with a flexible palate Neognathae › All other modern birds Neoaves › Birds of the elements Elementaves › Cranes and waders Gruimorphae
Wilson's Phalarope | Phalaropus tricolor
Grote franjepoot | Falaropo tricolor
Wilson's Phalarope is the largest of the three phalaropes and the only one that does not winter at sea. It breeds on the prairies of western North America and migrates overland to the salt lakes of the Andes and Argentina; northern and central Mexico lie on its main route. As in all phalaropes the roles are reversed: the female is larger and more brightly coloured, and the male incubates the eggs.
Voice
Rarely heard outside the breeding season; a soft, nasal wurk or vimp, mainly in flight.
Recording: Aluisio Ribeiro — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
22–24 cm, slender, with a small head, a long, needle-thin black bill and lobed toes. In non-breeding plumage plain pale grey above and white below, with a white forehead and supercilium and a grey stripe behind the eye; no black eye patch. The legs are then yellowish. The breeding female has a pale grey crown, a black stripe from the eye to the side of the neck merging into chestnut, a creamy foreneck and grey and chestnut back stripes; the male is duller. Juveniles have brown, pale-fringed upperparts. In flight no wing bar, but a white rump and a pale grey tail.
Confusion species
Red-necked Phalarope Phalaropus lobatus is smaller, with a shorter bill, a black eye patch in non-breeding plumage and a white wing bar. Lesser Yellowlegs Tringa flavipes also has a white rump and yellow legs, but is longer-legged, darker and spotted above. Stilt Sandpiper Calidris himantopus has a longer bill, slightly drooping at the tip, and greenish legs.
Habitat
Saline and alkaline lakes of the plateau, shallow lagoons, salt pans, shrimp ponds, reservoir margins and flooded fields. Unlike the other phalaropes it often walks over mud and along the waterline, picking at insects; when swimming it sometimes spins rapidly to bring prey to the surface. At salt lakes it sometimes gathers in flocks of hundreds to thousands.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
Passage migrant through most of Mexico, mainly across the plateau and along the Pacific coast, with large numbers on the saline and alkaline lakes of the north and centre of the country. In Central America a scarce passage migrant, mainly on the Pacific side, and rare in the Caribbean lowlands. Outside the guide area the species breeds in the interior of western Canada and the western United States and winters on the salt lakes of the Andes and in Argentina.
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Salt lakes and salt pans with flocks of sandpipers and yellowlegs are the places to look for a pale grey wader with a needle bill, especially from late July into September. In flight the lack of a wing bar combined with the white rump is a good feature.
Conservation status
Not threatened. On migration the species depends on a few large salt lakes in western North America and northern Mexico, where water extraction and drying out can reduce the food supply.
Scientific name
Phalaropus tricolor | (Vieillot, 1819)
Vieillot described the species in 1819 as Steganopus tricolor; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Phalaropus was introduced in 1760 by Brisson. Phalaropus comes through French phalarope from Greek phalaris 'coot' and pous 'foot': like coots, phalaropes have lobed toes. tricolor is Latin for 'three-coloured'. The specimen the first description was based on came from Paraguay.