The stilt sandpiper (''Calidris himantopus'') is a small
shorebird. The scientific 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 ...
. The genus name ''kalidris'' or ''skalidris'' is 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 ''himantopus'' means "strap foot" or "thong foot".
Taxonomy
This sandpiper bears some resemblance to the smaller calidrid
sandpipers or "
stints".
DNA sequence
DNA sequencing is the process of determining the nucleic acid sequence – the order of nucleotides in DNA. It includes any method or technology that is used to determine the order of the four bases: adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine. Th ...
information is incapable of determining whether it should be placed in ''
Calidris'' or in the
monotypic 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 ...
''
Micropalama''.
[ It appears most closely allied with the curlew sandpiper, which is another aberrant species only tentatively placed in ''Calidris'' and could conceivably be separated with it in '' Erolia''.
]
Range & habitat
The stilt sandpiper breeds in the open arctic tundra of North America
North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...
. It is a long-distance migrant, wintering mainly in northern 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 ...
. It occurs as a rare vagrant in western 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 enti ...
, Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the no ...
and northern Australia.
Breeding
This species nests on the ground, laying three or four eggs. The male has a display flight. Outside the breeding season, this bird is normally found on inland waters, rather than open coasts.
Description
This species resembles the curlew sandpiper in its curved bill, long neck, pale supercilium
The supercilium is a plumage feature found on the heads of some bird species. It is a stripe which runs from the base of the bird's beak above its eye, finishing somewhere towards the rear of the bird's head.Dunn and Alderfer (2006), p. 10 Also ...
and white rump. It is readily distinguished from that species by its much longer and paler legs, which give rise to its common and scientific 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 ...
s. It also lacks an obvious wing bar in flight. Breeding adults are distinctive, heavily barred beneath, and with reddish patches above and below the supercilium. The back is brown with darker feather centres. Winter plumage
Plumage ( "feather") is a layer of feathers that covers a bird and the pattern, colour, and arrangement of those feathers. The pattern and colours of plumage differ between species and subspecies and may vary with age classes. Within species, ...
is basically gray above and white below.
Juvenile stilt sandpipers resemble the adults in their strong head pattern and brownish back, but they are not barred below, and show white fringes on the back feathering.
Measurements:
* Length: 7.9-9.1 in (20–23 cm)
Diet
These birds forage on muddy, picking up food by sight, often jabbing like the dowitchers with which they often associate. They mainly eat insects, other invertebrates (such as mollusc
Mollusca is the second-largest phylum of invertebrate animals after the Arthropoda, the members of which are known as molluscs or mollusks (). Around 85,000 extant species of molluscs are recognized. The number of fossil species is esti ...
s), seeds, and the leaves
A leaf (plural, : leaves) is any of the principal appendages of a vascular plant plant stem, stem, usually borne laterally aboveground and specialized for photosynthesis. Leaves are collectively called foliage, as in "autumn foliage", wh ...
and roots of aquatic plants.[https://sta.uwi.edu/fst/lifesciences/sites/default/files/lifesciences/documents/ogatt/Calidris%20himantopus_Stilt%20sandpiper.pdf ]
References
External links
Stilt sandpiper species account
– Cornell Lab of Ornithology
– USGS Patuxent Bird Identification InfoCenter
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{{Taxonbar, from=Q839820
stilt sandpiper
stilt sandpiper
Native birds of Alaska
Birds of Canada
Birds of Hispaniola
Birds of the Dominican Republic
stilt sandpiper
stilt sandpiper