adult, male, Red-necked Phalarope in breeding plumage

While sewage treatment plants are not the most pleasant places to take photographs they do attract a wide range of birds. Red-necked phalaropes are a 'classic' sewage lagoon bird. Normally they spend most of the year out at sea feeding along convergence lines where wind and waves concentrate plankton and invertebrates. Here in Washington prolonged westerly winds often bring birds closer to shore and if the winds are particularly strong large numbers of birds show up in a 'wreck', sometimes turning up many miles inland. Small numbers of birds can be found along the coast regularly in May. The weather has been rather pleasant (though not very sunny) so the birds reported around the edges of Grays Harbor for the past week (22 were seen here at Ocean Shores sewage treatment plant last Tuesday) are probably the edges of a larger movement of birds just offshore as they head north to their breeding grounds in Alaska.

This small wader can be remarkably tame. While most birds will be wary of anything unfamiliar, phalaropes seem oblivious to the point of being reckless. The birds were feeding on insects, floating on the water and would come within 2m of where I was sitting at the edge of the lagoon. Even when I moved about the birds would only move away a short distance before resuming feeding. Although the phalaropes were very co-operative, photographing them proved to be another matter.

Being rather windy all the insects were being blown to the south side of the lagoon. The sun did not come out until mid-morning by which time the glare on the water was too strong to get any good photos. I waited until mid-afternoon until the sun was on my back and I balanced myself, carefully, at the edge of the water to photograph the birds as they swam towards me.

For digiscoping I set the camera on manual focus, with the distance to infinity and use the scope to focus on the bird (the camera's autofocus was never designed to be used with a spotting scope). Phalaropes are positively hyper-active, never staying still for even a second so you have to be really quick . Waiting until the bird is posed correctly, composing the frame and getting the right focus is next to impossible however this is where the real benefits of having a digital camera come into play. I took 295 photos, out of which I got around twenty that were acceptable and of those maybe six of so that were good enough to keep. If I was using 35mm film this would have cost a small fortune or more likely I would never have tried to take the photos.