The Red-necked Phalarope (Phalaropus lobatus) is a small, neat wader often seen swimming with quick, darting movements, its thin, straight, needle-like bill and its reversed colour roles — the female brighter than the male — setting it apart from almost every other Swedish bird. It measures roughly 17–19 cm, with a wingspan of about 30–34 cm and a weight of around 30–50 g. In breeding plumage it shows a grey upperside, white throat, and a rust-brown band along the neck side, brightest and most striking in the female while the male is duller; in winter plumage the bird turns pale grey-white with a dark stripe through the eye. It swims unusually high and buoyant, almost cork-like on the water, often strikingly unafraid, and takes off and lands with quick, agile movements.
Its call is a short, sharp "kitt", heard mainly from birds at the breeding tarns and from resting migrants, and it is not a particularly loud or conspicuous sound. It breeds at shallow tarns and wet pools in the northern Swedish mountains, with a national population estimated at 15,000–25,000 pairs (around 19,000 estimated in 2018); it is a long-distance migrant, arriving in June and heading south again by August to winter far out at sea in tropical and subtropical waters, living a pelagic existence there. Sex roles are reversed: the brighter female holds the territory while the male alone incubates and tends the young, with the nest placed on the ground near a tarn, well hidden in low vegetation, and the clutch usually 4 eggs; because the male alone handles incubation and chick care, a female in a good season can pair with several males, unusual among Swedish birds. It feeds on small insects, crustaceans, and other plankton, using a distinctive technique of spinning in tight circles on shallow water to create a small vortex that draws prey to the surface, where it is picked off one by one with the fine, needle-shaped bill.
Read about this species in Swedish →