Wilson's Phalarope
Phalaropus tricolor
About This Species
Look for this small, needle-billed shorebird spinning in tight circles on shallow saline lakes and wetland margins, a distinctive feeding behaviour that stirs up invertebrates from the water column. Females are the more brightly coloured sex in this species, and large post-breeding staging flocks gather at hypersaline lakes in late summer before migrating south. Calm, shallow open water with a muddy or algal-rich bottom is the habitat to target.
Ethical Viewing Guidelines
- Stay well back from the water's edge, ideally 30 metres or more, and observe from a blind, vehicle, or fixed vantage point rather than walking the shoreline, since large staging flocks are easily flushed and rely on undisturbed feeding time to fuel migration.
- Wetland bird protections and disturbance restrictions vary by country and by site designation, so check whether a given lake or refuge has specific access rules before visiting.
- Avoid approaching dense flocks directly even where no formal restriction applies, since repeated flushing has a real energetic cost during migration staging.
LCAvesCharadriiformesScolopacidae
Seasonal Activity
467,741 sightings · 2000–2026
Citizen science records via GBIF
All monthsThis month
Classification
- Kingdom
- Animalia
- Phylum
- Chordata
- Class
- Aves
- Order
- Charadriiformes
- Family
- Scolopacidae
Photo
(c) Ad Konings, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC), uploaded by Ad Konings
CC-BY-NC-4.0
Occurrence data from GBIF.