The semipalmated sandpiper (''Calidris pusilla'') is a very small

shorebird 245px, A flock of 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 mudflats in order to foraging, ...

. The genus name 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 ...

''kalidris'' or ''skalidris'', a term used by

Aristotle Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical Greece, Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatet ...

for some grey-coloured waterside birds. The specific ''pusilla'' is

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 ...

for "very small". It is sometimes separated with other " stints" in ''Erolia,'' but, although these apparently form a

monophyletic In cladistics for a group of organisms, monophyly is the condition of being a clade—that is, a group of taxa composed only of a common ancestor (or more precisely an ancestral population) and all of its lineal descendants. Monophyletic ...

group, the present species' old

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial n ...

''Ereunetes'' had been proposed before ''Erolia''.

Description

It is a small sandpiper, 13–15 cm (5.1-5.9 in) long and weighing around 20-32 g (0.7-1.1 oz). Wingspan ranges from 13.8-14.6 in (35-37 cm). Adults have black legs and a short, stout, straight dark bill. The body is dark grey-brown on top and white underneath. The head and neck are tinged light grey-brown. This bird can be difficult to distinguish from other similar tiny shorebirds, in particular the western sandpiper; these are known collectively as "peeps" or " stints".

Breeding and habitat

Their breeding habitat is the southern tundra in

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 tota ...

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 ...

near water. They nest on the ground. The male makes several shallow scrapes; the female chooses one and adds grass and other material to line the nest. The female lays 4 eggs; the male assists in incubation. After a few days, the female leaves the young with the male; the young feed themselves. These birds forage on mudflats, picking up food by sight and feel (bill). They mainly eat aquatic insects and their larvae, spiders, snails, worms and crustaceans. Semipalmated sandpipers rely heavily on horseshoe crab eggs during spring migration. Females will also eat small mammal bones as an extra source of calcium during egg laying.

Status and migration

They are long distance

migrants Migrant may refer to: Human migration *Human migration *Emigration, leaving one's resident country with the intent to settle elsewhere *Immigration, movement into a country with the intent to settle * Economic migrant, someone who emigrates from o ...

and winter in coastal

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 souther ...

, with some going to the southern

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

and the Caribbean. They migrate in flocks which can number in the hundreds of thousands, particularly in favoured feeding locations such as the

Bay of Fundy The Bay of Fundy (french: Baie de Fundy) is a bay between the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, with a small portion touching the U.S. state of Maine. It is an arm of the Gulf of Maine. Its extremely high tidal range is th ...

and

Delaware Bay Delaware Bay is the estuary outlet of the Delaware River on the northeast seaboard of the United States. It is approximately in area, the bay's freshwater mixes for many miles with the saltwater of the Atlantic Ocean. The bay is bordered inla ...

. This species is a rare but regular vagrant to western Europe. Although very numerous, these birds are highly dependent on a few key stopover habitats during their migration, notably Mary's Point and Johnson's Mills along Shepody Bay, an arm of the Bay of Fundy. During the months of July and August, the Nature Conservancy of Canada runs an information center about these shorebirds in Johnson's Mills, New Brunswick.

References

External links

Semipalmated sandpiper species sccount
- Cornell Lab of Ornithology

- USGS Patuxent Bird Identification InfoCenter

* ttp://www.surfbirds.com/Features/coxpeeps1006/coxpeeps1006.html An online identification article covering this species and other small calidridsat surfbirds.com * * *
Semipalmated sandpiper
- BirdLife International {{Taxonbar, from=Q735092 Native birds of Alaska Birds of Canada Birds of Hispaniola Birds of the Dominican Republic Calidris Erolia Sandpipers Migratory birds (Western Hemisphere) Birds described in 1766 Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus

Description

Breeding and habitat

Status and migration

References

Further reading

Identification

External links