Urban birds

Travel restrictions have prevented Urban Birder David Lindo from going about his birding business, so this month he turns his attention to urban birds themselves!

In a change to his regular column (owing to travel restrictions) David Lindo concentrates on the urban birds themselves

Welcome to my new column in which I highlight a different species of bird from around the world that can be sometimes found in urban areas and thus, could be deemed an urban bird. Which raises the question: what makes an urban bird?

Does it have to be hanging out with pigeons on crowded street corners, as a chosen habitat choice? Well, for an urban birder it is quite simple: an urban bird is a species that turns up in urban areas, during the course of its life cycle.

This could simply be as a migrant, or even as a vagrant; through to choosing to breed or even full on residing in towns and cities on a permanent basis. Over the upcoming months I hope to introduce (and sometimes reintroduce) you to species that are ‘urban birds’ in some areas of their world distribution.

Some of these species will be clearly recognisable to you from urban settings in the UK; while others would be hardly thought of as ‘urbanites’, such as that birders’ delight – the Red-necked Phalarope.

Yes, you may be startled to think of this enigmatic member of the wader family as an urban bird, but indulge me, please. The Red-necked Phalarope is one of three species of phalarope; the others being the Grey (also known as the Red Phalarope in the New World) and the Americas’ very own Wilson’s Phalarope, a rare vagrant to these shores.

The Red-necked Phalarope (also known as the Northern Phalarope or Hyperborean Phalarope), is a species that we birders in the UK usually have to make a special trip to Shetland, to chance upon one of the handful of breeding pairs. Otherwise, we hang on to the slim hope of finding one spinning around on a random pond while on migration.

The phalaropes are a genus of Amazonians! The females are gaudier and are dominant over the males, with whom the family duties are left. Aside from our tiny breeding population in Scotland and occasionally, Ireland, this phalarope also breeds in the arctic regions of North America as well as Eurasia. We, indeed, are on the extreme edge of its global range.

As mentioned earlier, it is migratory and, unusually for a wader, some spend their winters out in the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean. It shares this trait with the Grey Phalarope, but curiously, the Wilson’s Phalarope chooses to winter inland on salt lakes near the Andes, in Argentina.

Remarkable journey

The incredible and highly unusual migrations that the Red-necked Phalarope makes to its winter quarters have recently received many column inches in the birding press. But, I just have to recount again the remarkable tracking of a tagged bird from Fetlar, Shetland.

Scientists following this bird made the unexpected discovery that it wintered with a North American population in the Pacific Ocean. It took a 16,000-mile round-trip across the Atlantic via Iceland and Greenland, then south down the eastern seaboard of North America, across the Caribbean and Mexico before finishing up off the coast of Ecuador and Peru.

Interestingly, it is now thought that the Icelandic and Shetland breeders could be an offshoot of the North American population and not the geographically closer Scandinavian birds that are believed to winter in the Arabian Sea.

But with all this globe-trotting through some of the remotest spots in the world, how is the Red-necked Phalarope an urban bird? If you happen to be hanging around in Reykjavík, Iceland’s capital, during their brief summer, then the chances are that your urban birding species tally will include such birds as Arctic Tern, Ptarmigan and Red-necked Phalarope. Where else can you be in an urban setting and watch Red-necked Phalaropes going about their business, while hearing the chilling wailing of Great Northern Divers, over the honking of car horns?

I remember standing on the shores of Elliöavatn, a large lake on the southeastern edge of Reykjavík at 1am, listening to countless drumming Snipe and the scratchy songs of several Redwings that were secreted in a nearby plantation – one of the few (plantations, not Redwings) on the whole island.

Despite the hour, it was still bright daylight as it was the summer solstice. While watching a family of Great Northern Divers, I was aware of something crawling onto my boot. I looked down to see a tiny ball of feathers with a pair of oversized feet and long spindly toes. It was a phalarope chick. Afraid for its safety, I picked the little mite up only to notice a male Red-necked Phalarope standing nearby looking very anxiously at me. I placed the chick near him.

He then turned and scuttled off with his offspring along with its three other hitherto unseen siblings! What a moment! I had held a Red-necked Phalarope! It is unlikely that there will ever be breeding Red-necked Phalaropes in our UK urban centres. But here’s hoping!