A Red necked Phalarope in The Midlands 31st August 2026

Bank Holiday Monday 7am.

Mrs U was going to London to meet a friend so the day was mine to do with as I wished.

I lay in bed considering my options There was still the Long tailed Shrike nearby at Eastleach but I had already been nineteen times and fancied something different. My local Farmoor Res maybe? But no that would be very busy, it being a public holiday.

I had noticed that for the past two days a juvenile Red necked Phalarope had taken up temporary residence on an inland lake going by the name of Bodymoor Heath Water that was part of Kingsbury Water Park, which is in the West Midlands.Always a good bird to see and as they invariably are, very confiding and giving exceptionally close views, this ticked the box for today's birding.

But would it still be there today? I decided to await news on my Birdguides app which duly arrived at 0842, telling me it was still there and it would take an hour and twenty minutes drive to get to the site. 

I duly left for Kingsbury at 9am

Weather is always a consideration when birding and consulting my Met Office app it looked uninviting with rain predicted from 10am onwards but the forecast has been decidedly unreliable lately so I decided to take a chance. Currently it was sunny and the southwest wind was soft and mild.

I suppose a Bank Holiday is not the best time to venture onto our roads especially motorways but it was not a long journey by twitching standards and if I left fairly promptly I would probably miss the worst of the traffic.Coming back might be a problem but I could deal with that when the time came

I set off from home, crossing the Cotswolds and stopping for a coffee at my local cafe, The Mill in Chipping Norton. An infusion of caffeine set me up for the journey and as hoped there was comparatively little traffic to hinder my progress across Warwickshire to join the M40 and head north for Kingsbury.

An hour later I turned off the M42 and following a few minor roads arrived at the Water Park to discover it was highly popular with a number of pay and display car parks already almost full and people setting up tables and chairs around camper vans preparing for a day out. Hardly surprising. It was a Bank Holiday after all.

Uncertainly I followed a narrow winding road past all the cars and people, not quite sure if this was a wide footpath or narrow road, judging by the number of people wandering along it and was very relieved to find it led to a small, almost empty car park adjacent to a sailing club and right beside a large lake.Not quite sure if I was in the right place I was re-assured to note the presence of birders armed with cameras and scopes. I drew up to park in front of a small gap in the lakeside trees and an enquiry of one of the birders confirmed that I was in the right place and the lake before me was the one with the phalarope.

I made a short walk back to a pay and display machine for my £5.00 all day parking ticket and returned to get my camera and bins from the car. Another birder standing at the gap in the trees pointed to the water and there, very close to the bank was the tiny wader I had come to see.

A Swallow photobombing the phalarope

It was as straightforward as that. In typical phalarope fashion it was energetically swimming  back and fore picking small items of food from the water. I had forgotten just how small they are, even smaller than a Grey Phalarope, which are the more usual phalarope species to be found in situations such as this. 

A juvenile, it was so young it still retained buff on its white neck. Its upperparts were dark brown. the feathers liberally marked with straw coloured edgings creating a neatly patterned image of stripes. Otherwise it was predominantly white, on both head and underbody, its eye underlined with a mascara like band of black curving across the side of its head and a skull cap of  dark brown.

It swam with a nodding head, Moorhen style, ceaselessly picking at the water searching for food.

Any concerns about it being distant were now long since dispelled as I watched it from just metres away and determined to make the most of this opportunity..

There were two small gaps in the lakeside trees in front of the car park, which fortuitously it spent most of its time swimming in front of but occasionally it would swim out of sight behind the trees. I noted that a small detour would bring me to a more open area of waste ground at the edge of the lake and give an unobstructed view from a concrete edge of sorts and this area, normally out of bounds had apparently been opened up especially for birders coming to see the phalarope so I adjourned there

This allowed even closer views of the mite and at various points it was no further than eight feet from me, totally unafraid. I paused to consider this bird's situation which one could only marvel at.Normally migrating at sea, presumably it had been blown inland and in a hostile abnormal environment found the nearest thing to normality for a phalarope  to be this large lake, the margins of which would not be too dissimilar to  the small pool where it had been born and raised, possibly in The Hebrides on the west coast of Scotland or in Shetland, maybe even further north in the arctic regions of Scandinavia

If it was a bird from Scotland. its ultimate destination is almost inconceivable. From here it would make its way overland to the sea and then head out across the Atlantic Ocean to the eastern seaboard of the USA and then fly south, crossing the Caribbean and Mexico to reach the Pacific Ocean and spend the winter off Ecuador and Peru with Red necked Phalaropes from North America. This was all revealed by tagging a phalarope from Fetlar on Shetland and giving rise to the supposition that the birds breeding on Shetland were derived from a North American population rather than the geographically closer Scandinavian populations 

It is totally astonishing that this tiny bird slightly smaller than a Starling can make such a journey.Or maybe it was a Scandinavian bird and would head for its normal winter quarters which are thought to be the Arabian Sea. There was no way of knowing but either destination is surely cause for sheer wonder and admiration.

For the next hour I indulged myself and settled to enjoy the experience with no more than half a dozen other birders. 

The lake also had another pleasant surprise in the form of an adult Little Gull that was flying around the lake elegantly dipping to pick flies from its surface. Its plumage was worn, especially the flight feathers and I noticed it carried a tracker attached to its back. Little Gulls also winter at sea so  I wonder if this and the phalarope got caught up in the same weather system that delivered them to this unlikely inland location.

The predicted rain failed to appear but instead the greyness was punctuated by occasional warm sunny spells coming from a sun emerging periodically from a sky of mashed potato like white cumulous clouds. 

Fortunate to be away from the main concentration of public in this apparently highly popular park we enjoyed  our communion with the phalarope and after taking far too many images I relaxed and just watched this tiny bird, its presence so incongruous on an unremarkable lake in the heart of England and so far from its normal home out on the trackless wastes of two huge oceans

Even now nature's creations and fellow inhabitants of a world we seem set on destroying can cause one to stop, marvel and look on in awe and wonder.