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July 27, 2020 12:29 PM

Wilson’s Phalarope forages in the water
Wilson’s Phalarope forages in the mud
Wilson’s Phalarope forages in a pool (more normally)
Wilson’s Phalarope forages on a log (more normally)
All about Wilson’s Phalarope according to Cornell, according to Audubon

While not a “previously”, the Wilson’s Phalarope is nonetheless an implicit subject of the recent “decolonizing bird names” thread.

posted by Going To Maine (11 comments total)

Phalaropes are the best.

Apart from all the twirling, they also practice polyandry: the brightly coloured females each mate with several drabber males, and lay multiple clutches of eggs for the males to incubate. Also true of jacanas and buttonquails.
posted by Bloxworth Snout at 12:47 PM on July 27, 2020 [6 favorites]

Those jacanas! Amazing.
posted by Going To Maine at 1:00 PM on July 27, 2020

So that's what was going on behind that fence
posted by Beardman at 1:12 PM on July 27, 2020

Interesting that there's a plausible explanation for why they're spinning around on the water, but not why that one is twirling around on foot in the mud.

"Behavior: Dabbler." Same.
posted by phooky at 1:12 PM on July 27, 2020

why that one is twirling around on foot in the mud

Perhaps the same reason seagulls dance?

(spoiler: to simulate the sound/feel of raindrops so that worms come to the surface)
posted by Pallas Athena at 2:34 PM on July 27, 2020 [3 favorites]

Whatever is under the water must be delicious.
posted by sexyrobot at 2:46 PM on July 27, 2020 [3 favorites]

Curious but true: Wilson never saw a live specimen of Wilson's Phalarope, and didn't realise it was a new species. He only knew it from a stuffed specimen in Henry Trowbridge's Museum in Albany. The British naturalist Joseph Sabine named it Wilson's Phalarope in 1823, but without realising that Wilson had already described it under a different name.

Description and image of the phalarope from the first edition of Wilson's American Ornithology (1808-14). Description by Joseph Sabine, from Franklin's Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea (1823).

In the light of the earlier discussion about decolonising birds' names, it's worth mentioning that Wilson was a strong opponent of slavery. When he travelled through Kentucky in 1810 he was horrified to see a woman and boy being sold for $325. 'Damned, damned slavery! this is one infernal custom which the Virginians have brought into this country.'
posted by verstegan at 3:11 PM on July 27, 2020 [7 favorites]

Scots of Wilson's era could be a very confused bunch. Burns, Wilson's peer, wrote at length about the freedom of humanity as an ideal, but was only prevented from taking up his intended post as an overseer of enslaved people in the Caribbean through ill health. The Paisley weavers such as Wilson benefited greatly from colonial policy which suppressed local manufacture in the occupied countries, and appropriated designs (such as the “Paisley” pattern) to weave and sell abroad.
posted by scruss at 3:39 PM on July 27, 2020 [2 favorites]

Phalaropes show up in coastal New Jersey (about an hour or an hour and a half away from me) with regularly but infrequently. I really do need to make a trip to see them next time they're around.
posted by mollweide at 5:32 PM on July 27, 2020

No wonder they're so thin! I like to think they're spinning around because they want to make the food think they've moved away, but right when they do, BAM the bird does a U-turn and snatches them up. Constantly they are doing this.
posted by rhizome at 10:15 PM on July 27, 2020

I really want to make an Alan Paton joke here, but I can't quite stitch it together.
posted by aramaic at 8:39 AM on July 28, 2020