The Rednecked Phalarope Breaks Bird Stereotypes
Red-necked phalaropes are not your average rednecks. The tiny shorebirds don’t drive pickup trucks, and males are the ultimate house-husbands, sitting on eggs until they hatch and leading newborns to food. Mother phalaropes drop the eggs and their parental duties simultaneously, hopping off in search of another mate and leaving dad alone to raise the kids.
The phalarope way of making more phalaropes is somewhat unique in the animal kingdom, where mothers usually nurture young, and fathers—as is the case with bull moose— sometimes assume the role of deadbeat dads after mating. Many birds, among them ravens and chickadees, share parenting duties, but phalaropes take role reversal to the extreme. Not only do females fly the coop after laying eggs, their bodies are larger than males’ and their feathers are more colorful. In Alaska, the phalarope’s unorthodox strategy seems to be working, according to biologist Doug Schamel.
Schamel is an assistant professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks who has studied phalaropes in Alaska for more than 15 years. His favorite study site is Cape Espenberg, a finger of tundra and sand extending from the northernmost part of the Seward Peninsula, the knob in western Alaska that’s also home to Nome.
The treeless mat of tundra, sand dunes, and lakes of Cape Espenberg has special meaning to Schamel. He and his wife, biologist Diane Tracy, worked together there in the 1970s. In the summer of 1994, they decided to bring both their children. Jay and Juliann Schamel, 12 and 10 years old when they started summering at Cape Espenberg, played in sand dunes, helped their parents capture shorebirds, and started early on their school science projects. The time on the tundra seems to have paid off for sister and brother.
Juliann wrote a paper on foxes and phalaropes that was published in 1997; Jay’s study on western sandpipers earned him first place in the National Junior Science and Humanities Symposium and a scholarship check for $20,000.
During five summers, the Schamels lived in tents pitched on flat spots on the tundra of Cape Espenberg. Their neighbors included ringed seals, jaegers, foxes, and 100 species of birds. Among these were the phalaropes, birds with needle-like beaks that migrate from Alaska to South America each year. Female phalaropes typically lay four eggs in a nest of grasses, then take off to repeat the mating process with another male. The male incubates the tiny eggs, each about as heavy as a nickel. Fledgling phalaropes make the single parent’s duty a bit easier because they emerge from the egg feathered and ready to walk and swim. The father leads them to food sources, such as hatching mosquitoes and midges, and shows the youngsters how to eat. He also responds to their peeps when the little birds get cold, allowing them to snuggle against the bare spot on his chest. Doug Schamel said the birds are so tame that a father bird once hopped onto his hand in response to the call of a baby bird that rested in Schamel’s palm. He watched as the baby got its warm-up hug from dad.
This fearlessness, and the vulnerable practice of nesting on the tundra, has made phalaropes and their eggs easy targets for jaegers, foxes, and even cranes, which sometimes eat eggs. During a recent summer, predators destroyed 42 of the 44 nests Schamel monitored. Though the percentage of failed nests is high among phalaropes at Cape Espenberg, Schamel has watched other species of waterfowl disappear. Phalaropes’ success despite the destruction of so many of their nests may be due to the females’ readiness to breed. Females lay up to four sets of eggs per season, often with different mates. Their unusual strategy might put enough eggs out on the tundra to assure some phalaropes slip through the perilous journey to adulthood.
