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Wood Sandpiper

Wood Sandpiper

Tringa glareola

Identify the Wood Sandpiper by sound or photo and log your sightings with Birdpass.

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The Wood Sandpiper is a slim, spotted-backed wader and the smallest of the shanks, with a fine bill and long yellowish legs. It breeds in subarctic bogs and marshes from north-west Europe across the Palearctic and winters mainly in Africa, South Asia and Australia, keeping to fresh water. It is a common, noisy migrant through inland wetlands.

Did you know?

  • Unusually for a wader, it sometimes nests in old nests of Fieldfares.
  • It often perches on posts, bushes or small trees.

Voice

Call
Flight call

About the species

Identification

A small shank; the upperparts are grey-brown with pale spots and the underparts white; the head and neck are greyish, and a pale supercilium is clear behind the eye. The bill is straight and medium-length, the legs long and yellowish. In flight a white rump and pale underwing show; the pale-spotted back and yellowish legs separate it from Green Sandpiper.

Family

Scolopacidae

Size

Medium (thrush)

Colours

brown, white, grey, yellow

About the habitat

Shallow fresh waters – bogs, fens, marshes, pond and lake margins and flooded meadows; on migration small pools and wet fields.

Diet

Small aquatic invertebrates – especially insects and larvae – as well as worms, small crustaceans and snails, picked from mud and shallow water.

Behaviour

Walks daintily in very shallow water, pecking and probing, often in small groups on migration. Its flight is quick, and it gives a clear, ringing “chiff-if-if” call. Between feeding bouts it may perch on posts, shrubs or trees and even nests in old thrush nests. Both parents incubate, but the female often leaves soon after hatching. It can make non-stop flights of several thousand kilometres.

Sources

Photo: Abdul Momin, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wood Sandpiper Safari Park.jpg

Sound: Sonothèque ADVL, XC730783, CC0 1.0 https://xeno-canto.org/730783

Sound: Sudipto Roy, XC128179, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://xeno-canto.org/128179

Text: Wikipedia (English) + FinBIF species descriptions, CC BY-SA 4.0; FinBIF: CC BY 4.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_sandpiper

See also