The Red-necked Phalarope breeds in Arctic wetlands and often spends winter at sea. Females have brighter breeding plumage, while males incubate and care for the young.
In breeding plumage, the face and back are dark, with reddish brown along the sides of the neck and chest. In winter the red fades and the back is grey. Females are more vivid than males in breeding plumage.
Red-necked phalaropes take very different ocean journeys depending on where they breed. Light-level geolocators showed that birds breeding on north-eastern Atlantic islands travelled about 10,000 kilometres to the eastern Pacific. Birds breeding in Fennoscandia and Russia travelled about 6,000 kilometres, largely over land, to the Arabian Sea.
During winter, Pacific birds stayed in roughly one area, while Arabian Sea birds moved among several areas. The Atlantic-to-Pacific group also travelled faster during spring migration. Tracking revealed two distinct strategies linking breeding sites to distant seas.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.
Tracked populations wintered in different seas, the Pacific and the Arabian Sea. Conservation planning for this ocean-going bird can account for both routes and the distant non-breeding waters each population uses.