Birdpass
English
Little Curlew

Little Curlew

Numenius minutus

Identify the Little Curlew by sound or photo and log your sightings with Birdpass.

  • Download on the App Store
  • Get it on Google Play

The Little Curlew is the smallest curlew, a compact grey-brown wader with a short, slightly curved bill and Whimbrel-like head stripes. It breeds in loose colonies in river-valley clearings of northern Siberia and migrates to northern Australia and New Guinea, where it gathers in flocks on inland grasslands and farmland.

Did you know?

  • It is the smallest curlew.
  • It is a very rare vagrant to Europe.

Voice

Flight call

About the species

Identification

Streaked brown above, with a white throat, a greyish breast with dark streaks and a white belly; the head has dark lateral crown stripes. The bill is short for a curlew and only gently downcurved. Females are clearly larger than males.

Family

Scolopacidae

Size

Medium (thrush)

Colours

brown, white, grey

About the habitat

Breeds in clearings, burnt areas and meadows in river valleys of the northern Siberian taiga; winters on inland grasslands, fields and near fresh water in Australasia.

Diet

Mainly insects such as grasshoppers, beetles and ants, and other small invertebrates, picked from the ground or probed from soft soil; also seeds.

Behaviour

A strongly migratory and gregarious wader that forms large flocks outside the breeding season. It breeds in loose colonies, nesting in a ground scrape, and gives a repeated whistling call.

Sources

Photo: Wayne Cheng, CC BY 2.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Numenius minutus 1.jpg

Sound: Jochem Verweij, XC931502, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://xeno-canto.org/931502

Text: Wikipedia (English), CC BY-SA 4.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_curlew

See also