In 1750, the English naturalist George Edwards included an illustration and a description of the red phalarope in the third volume of his A Natural History of Uncommon Birds.

Edwards based his hand-coloured etching on a preserved specimen that had been brought to London from the Hudson Bay area of Canada by James Isham.

Linnaeus included a brief description, coined the binomial name Tringa fulicaria and cited Edwards' work.

[3] The red phalarope is now one of three species placed in the genus Phalaropus that was introduced in 1760 by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson.

The breeding female is predominantly dark brown and black above, with red underparts and white cheek patches.

The bird will reach into the outskirts of the vortex with its bill, plucking small insects or crustaceans caught up therein.

The red phalarope is one of the species to which the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA) applies.