On Tuesday, May 29, 2008 Bob and Deb Zaremba were birding in a farmland area in Bartow County along Brandon Farm Road and Taff Road. They stopped to scope a large cattle watering hole on Taff Road, near its intersection with Brandon Farm Road, which is a reliable location for shorebirds in migration. They located and identified a breeding-plumaged female RED-NECKED PHALAROPE feeding along the edges of the pond at 3:00pm. Bob called several area birders, who in turn alerted others, and between 6:00-7:30pm as many as nine people were successful in re-locating the bird. When it was observed later in the evening, it was spending much of its time picking tiny prey items from the top layers of the water, usually a few feet from shore. The bird did come out of the water a couple times to walk around, foraging in the mud and bathing in the shallower water. As the bird bathed, it displayed an entertaining behavior of leaping about a foot straight up in the air w hile fluttering its wings and ruffling its feathers vigorously. These photographs were taken by Rachel Cass using a hand-held digital camera held up to a spotting scope.

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