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The bar-tailed godwit (''Limosa lapponica'') is a large and strongly migratory
wader 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 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. ...
, which feeds on bristle-worms and shellfish on coastal mudflats and
estuaries An estuary is a partially enclosed coastal body of brackish water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea. Estuaries form a transition zone between river environments and maritime environmen ...
. It has distinctive red breeding plumage, long legs, and a long upturned bill. Bar-tailed godwits breed on
Arctic The Arctic ( or ) is a polar region located at the northernmost part of Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean, adjacent seas, and parts of Canada (Yukon, Northwest Territories, Nunavut), Danish Realm (Greenland), Finland, Iceland, N ...
coasts and tundra from Scandinavia to
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., ...
, and overwinter on coasts in temperate and tropical regions of Australia and New Zealand. The
migration Migration, migratory, or migrate may refer to: Human migration * Human migration, physical movement by humans from one region to another ** International migration, when peoples cross state boundaries and stay in the host state for some minimum le ...
of the subspecies ''Limosa lapponica baueri'' across the Pacific Ocean from Alaska to New Zealand is the longest known non-stop flight of any bird, and also the longest journey without pausing to feed by any animal. The round-trip migration for this subspecies is over .


Taxonomy

The bar-tailed godwit was formally described by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the tenth edition of his '' Systema Naturae'' under the
binomial name In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called nomenclature ("two-name naming system") or binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, bot ...
''Scolopax limosa''. It is now placed with three other godwits in the genus ''
Limosa The godwits are a group of large, long-billed, long-legged and strongly migratory waders of the bird genus ''Limosa''. Their long bills allow them to probe deeply in the sand for aquatic worms and molluscs. In their winter range, they flock t ...
'' that was introduced by the French zoologist
Mathurin Jacques Brisson Mathurin Jacques Brisson (; 30 April 1723 – 23 June 1806) was a French zoologist and natural philosopher. Brisson was born at Fontenay-le-Comte. The earlier part of his life was spent in the pursuit of natural history; his published works ...
in 1760. The genus name ''Limosa'' is from Latin and means "muddy", from ''limus'', "mud", referring to its preferred habitat. The specific name'' lapponica'' refers to Lapland. The English term "godwit" was first recorded in about 1416–17 and may be an imitation of the bird's call, or be derived from the Old English "god whit", meaning "good creature", perhaps referring to its eating qualities. Its English name is taken from the black-and-white barred tail and upper tail coverts in this species. In
French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
it is known as ''barge rousse'',
Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries * Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and p ...
''maliy veretennik'', Inuit ''chiuchiuchiak'', Yup'ik ''tevatevaaq'', and
Māori Māori or Maori can refer to: Relating to the Māori people * Māori people of New Zealand, or members of that group * Māori language, the language of the Māori people of New Zealand * Māori culture * Cook Islanders, the Māori people of the Co ...
''kūaka''. Four subspecies are recognised: *''L. l. lapponica'' ( Linnaeus, 1758) – breeds from northern Scandinavia east to the
Yamal Peninsula The Yamal Peninsula (russian: полуостров Ямал, poluostrov Yamal) is located in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug of northwest Siberia, Russia. It extends roughly 700 km (435 mi) and is bordered principally by the Kar ...
; winters western coasts of Europe and Africa from the
British Isles The British Isles are a group of islands in the North Atlantic Ocean off the north-western coast of continental Europe, consisting of the islands of Great Britain, Ireland, the Isle of Man, the Inner and Outer Hebrides, the Northern Isles, ...
and the Netherlands south to South Africa, and also around the Persian Gulf. Smallest subspecies, males up to , females to *''L. l. taymyrensis'' Engelmoer & Roselaar, 1998 – breeds in central Siberia from the Yamal Peninsula east to the
Anabar River The Anabar ( rus, Анабар, r=Anabar, in its upper course: Большая Куонамка ''Bolshaya Kuonamka''; sah, Анаабыр, translit=Anaabyr) is a river in Sakha, Russia. It is long ( counting the long Bolshaya Kuonamka ("Big Kuo ...
delta; winters in southwest Asia and coasts of Africa to South Africa *''L. l. menzbieri'' – Portenko, 1936 – breeds northeastern Asia from the
Anabar River The Anabar ( rus, Анабар, r=Anabar, in its upper course: Большая Куонамка ''Bolshaya Kuonamka''; sah, Анаабыр, translit=Anaabyr) is a river in Sakha, Russia. It is long ( counting the long Bolshaya Kuonamka ("Big Kuo ...
east to the
Kolyma River The Kolyma ( rus, Колыма, p=kəlɨˈma; sah, Халыма, translit=Khalyma) is a river in northeastern Siberia, whose basin covers parts of the Sakha Republic, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, and Magadan Oblast of Russia. The Kolyma is froz ...
delta; winters in southeast Asia and northwest Australia *''L. l. baueri'' –
Naumann Naumann is a Central German variation of the surname Neumann. Notable people with the surname include: * Albert Naumann (1875–?), German Olympic fencer * Alexander Naumann (1837–1922), German chemist * Christian August Naumann (1705–?), G ...
, 1836 – breeds in northeast Siberia to north and west Alaska; winters in China and Australasia. Largest subspecies. (includes ''anadyrensis'')


Description

The bar-tailed godwit is a relatively short-legged species of
godwit The godwits are a group of large, long-billed, long-legged and strongly migratory waders of the bird genus ''Limosa''. Their long bills allow them to probe deeply in the sand for aquatic worms and molluscs. In their winter range, they flock t ...
. The bill-to-tail length is , with a wingspan of . Males average smaller than females but with much overlap; males weigh , while females weigh ; there is also some regional variation in size (see subspecies, below). The adult has blue-grey legs and a long, tapering, slightly upturned bi-colored bill: pink at the base and black towards the tip. The neck, breast and belly are unbroken brick red in breeding plumage, and dark brown above. Females breeding plumage is much duller than males, with a chestnut to cinnamon belly. Breeding plumage is not fully apparent until the third year, and there are three distinguishable age classes; during their first migration north immature males are noticeably paler in colour than more mature males. Non-breeding birds seen in the Southern Hemisphere are plain grey-brown with darker feather centres, giving them a striped look, and are whitish underneath. Juveniles are similar to non-breeding adults but more buff overall with streaked plumages on flanks and breast. Alaska-breeding bar-tailed godwits show an increase in body size from north to south, but this trend is not apparent in their non-breeding grounds in New Zealand; birds of different sizes mix freely. ''Limosa lapponica'' is distinguished from the
black-tailed godwit The black-tailed godwit (''Limosa limosa'') is a large, long-legged, long-billed shorebird first described by Carl Linnaeus in 1758. It is a member of the godwit genus, ''Limosa''. There are four subspecies, all with orange head, neck and ches ...
(''Limosa limosa'') by its black-and-white horizontally-barred (rather than wholly black) tail, and lack of white wing bars. The most similar species is the
Asiatic dowitcher The Asian dowitcher (''Limnodromus semipalmatus'') is a rare medium-large wader. Description Adults have dark legs and a long straight dark bill, somewhat shorter than that of the long-billed dowitcher. The body is brown on top and reddish under ...
(''Limnodromus semipalmatus'').


Distribution and migration

All bar-tailed godwits spend the Northern Hemisphere summer in the Arctic, where they breed, and make a long-distance migration south in winter to more temperate areas. ''L. l. lapponica'' make the shortest migration, some only as far as the North Sea, while others travel as far as India. Bar-tailed godwits nesting in Alaska (''L. l. baueri'') travel all the way to Australia and New Zealand. They undertake the longest non-stop migrations of any bird, and to fuel they carry the greatest fat loads of any migratory bird so far studied, reducing the size of their digestive organs to do so. ''L. l. bauri'' breeds in Alaska and spends the non-breeding season in eastern Australia and New Zealand. ''L. l. menzbieri'' breeds in Siberia and migrates to northern and western Australia. Birds breeding in Siberia follow the coast of Asia northwards and southwards, but those breeding in Alaska migrate directly across the Pacific to Australasia away. To track the return journey, seven birds in New Zealand were tagged with surgically-implanted transmitters and tracked by satellite to the Yellow Sea in China, a distance of ; the actual track flown by one bird was , taking nine days. At least three other bar-tailed godwits also appear to have reached the Yellow Sea after non-stop flights from New Zealand. One specific female of the flock, nicknamed "E7", flew onward from China to Alaska and stayed there for the breeding season. Then in August 2007 she departed on an eight-day non-stop flight from western Alaska to the
Piako River The Piako River is a lowland river system that drains into the Firth of Thames on the North Island of New Zealand. Together with the Waihou River, it is one of the two main rivers systems which drains the Hauraki Plains. It is the dominant rive ...
near Thames, New Zealand, setting a new known flight record of . This ''L. l. bauri'' female made a 174 day round-trip journey of with 20 days of flying. In 2021, a male bar-tailed godwit, 4BBRW, set a new record for non-stop migratory flight with an 8,100 mile (approximately 13035km) flight from Alaska, USA to New South Wales, Australia. The same individual held a previous record in 2020. In 2022, a godwit numbered 234684 left Alaska on 13 October and flew non-stop to Tasmania, the first time a tagged bird has flown this route. It flew a minimum of in 11 days 1 hour: a record non-stop distance. To fuel such long journeys, ''L. l. baueri'' birds in New Zealand deposit much more fat for their body size than other subspecies, allowing them to fly to . Both Australasian subspecies head north to their breeding grounds along the coast of Asia to the
Yalu Jiang The Yalu River, known by Koreans as the Amrok River or Amnok River, is a river on the border between North Korea and China. Together with the Tumen River to its east, and a small portion of Paektu Mountain, the Yalu forms the border between ...
coastal wetland in the north Yellow Sea, the most important staging grounds for godwits and
great knot __NOTOC__ The great knot (''Calidris tenuirostris'') is a small wader. It is the largest of the calidrid species. The genus name is from Ancient Greek ''kalidris'' or ''skalidris'', a term used by Aristotle for some grey-coloured waterside bird ...
s (''Calidris tenuirostris)'' in their northern migration. ''Baueri'' birds rested for about 41 days before continuing approximately on to Alaska. ''Menzbieri'' spent on average 38 days in the Yellow Sea region and flew an additional to high Arctic Russia. Birds will often depart early from New Zealand if there are favourable winds; they seem to be able to predict weather patterns that will assist them on the entire migration route. Birds that had nested in southern Alaska were larger and departed New Zealand earliest; this pattern was repeated six months later, with birds departing Alaska in the same order they arrived, and over the same span of days. Birds in southern New Zealand departed on average 9–11 days earlier than birds in more northern sites. Godwits arrive at the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta in Alaska in two waves; local breeders in early May, and larger flocks in the third week of May en route to breeding grounds further north.


Behaviour and ecology


Breeding

The bar-tailed godwit is a non-breeding migrant in Australia and New Zealand. Birds first depart for their northern hemisphere breeding sites at age 2–4. Breeding take place each year in Scandinavia, northern Asia, and Alaska. The nest is a shallow cup in moss sometimes lined with vegetation. Clutch size is from 2 to 5, averaging four. Both sexes share incubation of the eggs for 20 to 21 days, the female during the day and the male at night.


Food and feeding

The birds' main source of food in wetlands is bristle-worms (up to 70%), supplemented by small
bivalves Bivalvia (), in previous centuries referred to as the Lamellibranchiata and Pelecypoda, is a class of marine and freshwater molluscs that have laterally compressed bodies enclosed by a shell consisting of two hinged parts. As a group, biv ...
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 ...
s. In wet pastures, bar-tailed godwits eat invertebrates. In a major staging site in the northern Yellow Sea, they continue to hunt
polychaete Polychaeta () is a paraphyletic class of generally marine annelid worms, commonly called bristle worms or polychaetes (). Each body segment has a pair of fleshy protrusions called parapodia that bear many bristles, called chaetae, which are ma ...
s, but most of their food intake is the bivalve mollusc '' Potamocorbula laevis'', which they generally swallow whole. Male bar-tailed godwits are smaller than females and have shorter bills. In a study at the Manawatū Estuary, shorter-billed birds (males) fed mostly on small surface prey like ''
Potamopyrgus ''Potamopyrgus'' is a genus of minute freshwater snails with an operculum, aquatic gastropod molluscs or micromolluscs in the family Tateidae.Bouchet, P.; Rosenberg, G. (2014); Criscione and Ponder 2013. ''Potamopyrgus'' Stimpson, 1865. A ...
'' snails, half being snail specialists, whereas females consumed more deeply-buried prey such as worms; the birds also displayed some individual food preferences.


Status

The status of the bar-tailed godwit is Near Threatened, and the population is declining. Fewer birds have been using East African estuaries since 1979, and there has been a steady decline in numbers around the Kola Peninsula, Siberia, since 1930. The global population is estimated to number 1,099,000–1,149,000 individuals. Both ''L. l. bauri'' and ''L. l. menzbieri'' adult survival rates decreased between 2005 and 2012, probably because of the loss of intertidal staging areas in the Yellow Sea. The construction of seawalls and the reclamation of mudflats have led to a critical reduction in food supplies for migrating birds, particularly subspecies like ''L. l. menzbieri'' that rely on the Yalu Jiang estuary on both their northward and southward migrations. Numbers of ''L. l. baueri'' have declined in New Zealand from over 100,000 in the late 1980s to 67,500 in 2018. The bar-tailed godwit is one of the species to which the ''Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds'' (
AEWA The Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds, or African-Eurasian Waterbird Agreement (AEWA) is an independent international treaty developed under the auspices of the United Nations Environment Programme's Conventio ...
) applies. In New Zealand the species is protected under the 1953 Wildlife Act.


Gallery

File:Limosa lapponica MHNT.jpg, Egg File:Limosa lapponica Landing - Orielton Lagoon.jpg, ''L. l. baueri'' in
Tasmania, Australia ) , nickname = , image_map = Tasmania in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of Tasmania in AustraliaCoordinates: , subdivision_type = Country , subdi ...
(note the barring on the tail) File:Bar Tailed Godwit in breeding plumage (8586327398).jpg, Breeding plumage, Dorset File:Bar-tailed Godwits (8592998386).jpg, In flight, Dorset File:Limosa lapponica lapponica.jpg, ''L. l. lapponica'', Spain


References


Identification

*


External links


Bar-tailed godwit species text in The Atlas of Southern African Birds
* * * * * * * * *The kūaka discussed on RNZ ''
Critter of the Week ''Critter of the Week'' is a weekly RNZ National programme about endangered and neglected native plants and animals of New Zealand. Beginning in 2015, ''Critter of the Week'' is an approximately 15-minute discussion between Nicola Toki of th ...
''
21 Feb 2020
{{Taxonbar, from=Q18864
bar-tailed godwit The bar-tailed godwit (''Limosa lapponica'') is a large and strongly migratory wader in the family Scolopacidae, which feeds on bristle-worms and shellfish on coastal mudflats and estuaries. It has distinctive red breeding plumage, long legs, an ...
bar-tailed godwit The bar-tailed godwit (''Limosa lapponica'') is a large and strongly migratory wader in the family Scolopacidae, which feeds on bristle-worms and shellfish on coastal mudflats and estuaries. It has distinctive red breeding plumage, long legs, an ...
Native birds of Alaska Birds of Russia Birds of Scandinavia Birds of Africa Birds of New Zealand Birds of Australia
bar-tailed godwit The bar-tailed godwit (''Limosa lapponica'') is a large and strongly migratory wader in the family Scolopacidae, which feeds on bristle-worms and shellfish on coastal mudflats and estuaries. It has distinctive red breeding plumage, long legs, an ...
bar-tailed godwit The bar-tailed godwit (''Limosa lapponica'') is a large and strongly migratory wader in the family Scolopacidae, which feeds on bristle-worms and shellfish on coastal mudflats and estuaries. It has distinctive red breeding plumage, long legs, an ...
Articles containing video clips Holarctic birds