Red Phalarope (first winter), Lower Foulridge Reservoir, East Lancashire
IT’S ONLY TAKEN ME 18 YEARS to catch up with a Red (or Grey) Phalarope in East Lancs! I moved here in 2005, a week after the New Laithe Farm scrapes bird, so I owe the finder of this one, Ian Corbett a big thank you! Apart from a fly-by bird at Stocks I can’t think of another one in the intervening period. I have seen hundreds of them this summer on the Alaskan tundra so it was great to see the next stage of their life cycle, a first winter bird on migration. It has been windy lately, and it is maybe the same weather that brought the American passerines to the west that delivered this lovely little bird to East Lancs. They are often storm-blown inland. It was feeding very actively and interestingly mostly in a tiny inlet on the SE corner of Lower Foulridge Reservoir. Typically ultra tame it walked right past me a few times less than a metre away but it would not do this for the folks standing bolt upright. I can’t understand why birders don’t get this. Or maybe they don’t own a washing machine? Anyway the R5’s flipscreen came into its own again, no need to lie down in the mud anymore.
