The Hudsonian godwit (''Limosa haemastica'') is a large
shorebird
245px, A flock of Dunlins and Red knots">Red_knot.html" ;"title="Dunlins and Red knot">Dunlins and Red knots
Waders or shorebirds are birds of the order Charadriiformes commonly found wikt:wade#Etymology 1, wading along shorelines and mudflat ...
in the sandpiper family,
Scolopacidae
Sandpipers are a large family, Scolopacidae, of waders. They include many species called sandpipers, as well as those called by names such as curlew and snipe. The majority of these species eat small invertebrates picked out of the mud or soil. ...
. The genus name ''Limosa'' is from
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
and means "muddy", from ''limus'', "mud". The specific ''haemastica'' is from
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic p ...
and means "bloody". An 18th-century name for this bird was red-breasted godwit.
The English term "godwit" was first recorded in about 1416–7 and is believed to imitate the bird's call.
Description
Adults have long dark legs and a long pink bill with a slight upward curve and dark at the tip. The upper parts are mottled brown and the underparts are chestnut. The tail is black and the rump is white. They show black wing linings in flight. The legs and feet are bluish-grey.
Breeding
Their breeding habitat is the far north near the tree line in northwestern
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
and
Alaska
Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U.S. ...
, also on the shores of
Hudson Bay. They nest on the ground, in a well-concealed location in a
marsh
A marsh is a wetland that is dominated by herbaceous rather than woody plant species.Keddy, P.A. 2010. Wetland Ecology: Principles and Conservation (2nd edition). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. 497 p Marshes can often be found a ...
y area. The female usually lays 4 olive-buff eggs marked with darker splotches. Incubation period is 22 days.
Both parents look after the young birds, who find their own food and are able to fly within a month of hatching.
Migration
They
migrate to
South America
South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the sout ...
and the
Caribbean. These birds gather at
James Bay
James Bay (french: Baie James; cr, ᐐᓂᐯᒄ, Wînipekw, dirty water) is a large body of water located on the southern end of Hudson Bay in Canada. Both bodies of water extend from the Arctic Ocean, of which James Bay is the southernmost pa ...
before fall migration. In good weather, many birds make the trip south without stopping. They are
vagrants
Vagrancy is the condition of homelessness without regular employment or income. Vagrants (also known as bums, vagabonds, rogues, tramps or drifters) usually live in poverty and support themselves by begging, scavenging, petty theft, tempora ...
to
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...
,
Australia, and
South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...
.
They can perhaps be most easily seen in migration on the east coast of North America where they can be plentiful in migration in late July through early August.
Diet
These birds forage by probing in shallow water. They mainly eat insects and
crustacean
Crustaceans (Crustacea, ) form a large, diverse arthropod taxon which includes such animals as decapods, seed shrimp, branchiopods, fish lice, krill, remipedes, isopods, barnacles, copepods, amphipods and mantis shrimp. The crustacean group can ...
s.
Conservation history
Their numbers were reduced by hunting at the end of the 19th century.
References
External links
Hudsonian godwit - ''Limosa haemastica''- USGS Patuxent Bird Identification InfoCenter
- Cornell Lab of Ornithology
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{{Taxonbar, from=Q283458
Hudsonian godwit
Native birds of Alaska
Birds of Canada
Birds of the Dominican Republic
Birds of the Caribbean
Birds of South America
Hudsonian godwit
Hudsonian godwit