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Curlew Sandpiper

 
Curlew Sandpiper

 
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Curlew Sandpiper
 
 
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The Curlew Sandpiper, Calidris ferruginea, is a small wader
Wader

Waders, called shorebirds in North America , are members of the order Charadriiformes, excluding the more marine web-footed seabird groups....
 which breeds on the tundra
Tundra

In physical geography, tundra is an biome where the tree growth is hindered by low temperatures and short growing seasons. The term tundra comes from Kildin Sami tund?r, which means "uplands, treeless mountain tract." There are two types of tundra: Arctic tundra and alpine tundra....
 of Arctic
Arctic

The Arctic is the region around the Earth's North Pole, opposite the Antarctica region around the South Pole. The Arctic includes the Arctic Ocean and parts of Canada, Greenland , Russia, the United States , Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Finland....
 Siberia
Siberia

Siberia , is the name given to the vast region constituting almost all of North Asia and for the most part currently serving as the massive central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, having served in the same capacity previously for the Soviet Union from its beginning, and the Russian Empire beginning in the 16th century....
. It is strongly migratory
Bird migration

Bird migration refers to the regular seasonal journeys undertaken by many species of birds. Bird movements include those made in response to changes in food availability, habitat or weather....
, wintering mainly in Africa
Africa

Africa is the world's second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km? including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area....
, but also in south and southeast Asia
Asia

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent. It covers 8.6% of the Earth's total surface area and, with over 4 billion people, it contains more than 60% of the world's current human population....
 and in Australasia
Australasia

Australasia is a region of Oceania: New Zealand, Australia, Papua New Guinea, and neighbouring islands in the Pacific Ocean. The term was coined by Charles de Brosses in Histoire des navigations aux terres australes ....
. It is a vagrant to North America
North America

North America is the northern continent of the Americas, situated in the Earth's northern hemisphere and almost totally in the western hemisphere....
.

e birds are small waders, only slightly larger than Dunlin
Dunlin

The Dunlin, Calidris alpina, is a small wader, sometimes separated with the other "stints" in Erolia. It is a circumpolar breeder in Arctic or subarctic regions....
 at 19.5–21 cm in length, but differ from Dunlin in having a longer down-curved bill, longer neck and legs and a white rump.






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The Curlew Sandpiper, Calidris ferruginea, is a small wader
Wader

Waders, called shorebirds in North America , are members of the order Charadriiformes, excluding the more marine web-footed seabird groups....
 which breeds on the tundra
Tundra

In physical geography, tundra is an biome where the tree growth is hindered by low temperatures and short growing seasons. The term tundra comes from Kildin Sami tund?r, which means "uplands, treeless mountain tract." There are two types of tundra: Arctic tundra and alpine tundra....
 of Arctic
Arctic

The Arctic is the region around the Earth's North Pole, opposite the Antarctica region around the South Pole. The Arctic includes the Arctic Ocean and parts of Canada, Greenland , Russia, the United States , Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Finland....
 Siberia
Siberia

Siberia , is the name given to the vast region constituting almost all of North Asia and for the most part currently serving as the massive central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, having served in the same capacity previously for the Soviet Union from its beginning, and the Russian Empire beginning in the 16th century....
. It is strongly migratory
Bird migration

Bird migration refers to the regular seasonal journeys undertaken by many species of birds. Bird movements include those made in response to changes in food availability, habitat or weather....
, wintering mainly in Africa
Africa

Africa is the world's second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km? including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area....
, but also in south and southeast Asia
Asia

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent. It covers 8.6% of the Earth's total surface area and, with over 4 billion people, it contains more than 60% of the world's current human population....
 and in Australasia
Australasia

Australasia is a region of Oceania: New Zealand, Australia, Papua New Guinea, and neighbouring islands in the Pacific Ocean. The term was coined by Charles de Brosses in Histoire des navigations aux terres australes ....
. It is a vagrant to North America
North America

North America is the northern continent of the Americas, situated in the Earth's northern hemisphere and almost totally in the western hemisphere....
.

Description

These birds are small waders, only slightly larger than Dunlin
Dunlin

The Dunlin, Calidris alpina, is a small wader, sometimes separated with the other "stints" in Erolia. It is a circumpolar breeder in Arctic or subarctic regions....
 at 19.5–21 cm in length, but differ from Dunlin in having a longer down-curved bill, longer neck and legs and a white rump. The breeding adult has patterned dark grey upperparts and brick-red underparts. In winter, this bird is pale grey above and white below, and shows an obvious white supercilium
Supercilium

The term supercilium is a name for a plumage feature present on the heads of many bird species. It is a stripe which starts above the bird's loral area, continuing above the eye, and finishing somewhere towards the rear of the bird's head....
. Juveniles have a grey and brown back, a white belly and a peach-coloured breast.

Behaviour

The male Curlew Sandpiper performs an aerial display during courtship. The clutch of 3–4 eggs are laid in ground scrape in the tundra.

This wader is highly gregarious, and will form flocks with other calidrid waders, particularly Dunlin
Dunlin

The Dunlin, Calidris alpina, is a small wader, sometimes separated with the other "stints" in Erolia. It is a circumpolar breeder in Arctic or subarctic regions....
. Despite its easterly breeding range, this species is regular on passage in western Europe, presumably because of the southwesterly migration route.

It forage in soft mud on marshes and the coast, mainly picking up food by sight. It mostly eats insects and other small invertebrate
Invertebrate

An invertebrate is an animal lacking a vertebral column. The group includes 98% of all animal species ? all animals except those in the Chordate subphylum vertebrate ....
s.

The numbers of this species (and of Little Stint
Little Stint

The Little Stint, Calidris or Erolia minuta, is a very small wader. It breeds in arctic Europe and Asia, and is a long-distance bird migration, wintering south to Africa and south Asia....
) depend on the population of lemming
Lemming

Lemmings are small rodents, usually found in or near the Arctic, in tundra biomes. They are Subnivean and together with the voles and muskrats, they make up the Family Arvicolinae , which forms part of the largest mammal radiation by far, the superfamily Muroidea, which also includes the rats, mouse, hamsters, and gerbils....
s. In poor lemming years, predatory species such as skua
Skua

Skuas are seabirds in the family Stercorariidae. The three smaller skuas are called jaegers in North America.The name skua comes from Faroese language sk?gvur , and the island of Sk?voy is renowned for its colony of that bird....
s and Snowy Owl
Snowy Owl

The Snowy Owl is a large owl of the typical owl family Strigidae. The Snowy Owl was first classified in 1758 by Carolus Linnaeus, the Swedish naturalist who developed binomial nomenclature to classify and organize plants and animals....
s will take Arctic-breeding waders instead.

This species occasionally hybridizes with the Sharp-tailed Sandpiper
Sharp-tailed Sandpiper

The Sharp-tailed Sandpiper, Calidris acuminata is a small wader. It breeds in the boggy tundra of northeast Asia and is strongly bird migration, wintering in south east Asia and Australasia....
 and the Pectoral Sandpiper
Pectoral Sandpiper

The Pectoral Sandpiper, "Calidris" melanotos, is a small wader. It is sometimes separated with the "stint" sandpipers in Erolia. This may or may not represent a good monophyletic group, depending on the placement of the phylogenetically enigmatic Curlew Sandpiper , the type species of Erolia....
, producing the presumed "species" called "Cooper's Sandpiper
Hybridisation in shorebirds

Hybrid in shorebirds has been proven on only a small number of occasions; however, many individual shorebirds have been recorded by birdwatchers worldwide which do not fit the characters of known species....
" ("Calidris" × cooperi) and "Cox's Sandpiper
Cox's Sandpiper

Cox's Sandpiper is the name given to shorebirds which are Hybrid between male Pectoral Sandpiper and female Curlew Sandpipers. It was discovered in Australia in the 1950s, and named after Australian ornithologist John B....
" ("Calidris" × paramelanotos), respectively.

Taxonomy

This is a fairly unusual species, and has been proposed as as type species
Type species

In taxonomy, a type species is the species that originally defined a genus . It is an individual specimen that fixes the name of a genus . Two different definitions are used interchangeably, in a general term and a botanical term....
 of the genus Erolia but the DNA sequence
DNA sequence

A DNA sequence or genetic sequence is a succession of letters representing the primary structure of a real or hypothetical DNA molecule or strand, with the capacity to carry information as described by the central dogma of molecular biology....
 data is currently insufficient to resolve its relationships (Thomas et al., 2004). This matter is of taxonomic relevance since, as the Curlew Sandpiper is the type species, a close relationship with the small "stint
Stint

A stint is one of several very small waders in the paraphyletic "Calidris" assemblage - often separated in Erolia -, which in North America are known as peeps....
" sandpipers would preclude the use of Erolia for the present species.

The Curlew Sandpiper is one of the species to which the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA
AEWA

The Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds is the largest of its kind developed so far under the Bonn Convention....
) applies.



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