Carol Ann Simon, age 12, of Allentown, Penna., for her question:
What is a phalarope?
No, the phalarope is not related to the calliope or any other strange musical instrument. It is a bird alias the sea snipe. His alias gives a clue as to where we can find him. Sometime, especially after a wild gale, the phalarope is been with a beach party of assorted shore birds. But in the main, he spends his life far from the sight of land. With flocks of his feathery relatives he remains at sea for months at a time.
If you are lucky enough to spot him near the shore, you could never mistake the phalarope for any other bird. For he displays a most amazing fisherman’s trick. He spins around and around in the water like a whirling dervish. This dazzling spin attracts fish and other small sea dwellers who swim up to investigate. The phalarope may make two or three hundred turns before some tender morsel rises within grabbing range then he snaps. Dinner is swallowed whole and the Whiling bird never loses his balance or seems to get dizzy.
Some of the phalaropes, like many of the shore birds, nest in the bleak northern tundra lands. Others nest on the grim islands off the icy coast of Antarctica. Between nestings, they travel the worlds oceans. Huge flocks of them are often spotted far, far from land and all these whirling fishermen must be quite a sight.
The average phalarope is no more than eight or ten inches long. Yet he often winters at sea, weathering all but the worst of the angry gales, His winter plumage is dull grey above and white below. Like the sea going gull, he wears a thick coat of soft, warm feathers.
In the bird world, it is the custom for Papa to dress in gay summer plumage while the drably dressed Mama crouches inconspicuously on the nest, The phalarope family does not follow this custom. Papa is a drably dressed bird, summer and winter. It is Mama who wears the summer plumage of bright chestnut, black and white.
What's more, it is Mama Phalarope who does the courting. In most bird families, the courting is done by a Papa bird, strutting proudly in his gay plumage before the modest lady birds. Miss Phalarope, however, has ideas of her own. She chooses who shall be her husband and displays her bright plumage to convince him that she will make an attractive wife.
Apart from this turn about, we do not have much information about the family life of the phalarope. The nesting grounds are in the harsh tundras of the northern and southern hemispheres and, as yet, they have not been fully studied, Being sociable birds, countless youngsters are reared together in huge colonies. As soon as the children are grown up the whole tribe takes off for a whirling life on the bouncing ocean.