Godwit

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Godwit

The godwits are a group of large, long-billed, long-legged and 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....
wading

Wader

Waders, called shorebirds in North America , are members of the order Charadriiformes, excluding the more marine web-footed seabird groups....
bird

Bird

Birds are wing, Bipedalismal, endothermic , vertebrate animals that lay egg . There are around 10,000 living species, making them the most numerous tetrapod vertebrates....
s of the genus

Genus

A genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the classification of living and fossil organisms. The taxonomic ranks are domain , kingdom , phylum, class , order , family , genus, and species....
Limosa. They form large flocks on coasts and estuaries in winter.

They can be distinguished from the curlew

Curlew

Curlew is the common name for the bird genus Numenius, a group of eight wader species, characterised by a long slender downcurved bill and mainly brown plumage with little seasonal change....
s by their straight or slightly upturned bills, and from the dowitcher

Dowitcher

The three dowitchers are medium-sized long-billed wader birds. They resemble godwits in body and bill shape, and the reddish underparts in summer, but are much shorter legged, more like snipe to which they are also somewhat closer related ....
s by their longer legs. The winter plumages are fairly drab, but three species have reddish underparts when breeding. The females are appreciably larger than the males.

Although not common tablefare today, they were once a popular British dish.

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Encyclopedia

The godwits are a group of large, long-billed, long-legged and strongly migratory

Bird migration

Wader

Waders, called shorebirds in North America , are members of the order Charadriiformes, excluding the more marine web-footed seabird groups....
bird

Bird

Birds are wing, Bipedalismal, endothermic , vertebrate animals that lay egg . There are around 10,000 living species, making them the most numerous tetrapod vertebrates....
s of the genus

Genus

Curlew

Dowitcher

Thomas Browne

Sir Thomas Browne was an England author of varied works which disclose his wide learning in diverse fields including medicine, religion, science and the esoteric....
writing in the seventeenth century noted that godwits "were accounted the daintiest dish in England."

Godwits are shore birds (family Scolopacidae), large sandpipers with long legs and bills. Their long, subtly upcurved bills allow them to probe deeply in the sand for aquatic worms and mollusks. Godwits frequent tidal shorelines, breeding in northern climates in summer and migrating south in winter. In their winter range, they flock together where food is plentiful. The combination of long legs and long almost straight bill distinguishes the godwits from both the curlews and the dowitchers.

Family Scolopacidae

Genus Limosa

Black-tailed Godwit
Black-tailed Godwit

The Black-tailed Godwit, Limosa limosa, is a large, long-legged, long-billed shorebird first described by Carolus Linnaeus in 1758. It is a member of the Limosa genus, the godwits....
, Limosa limosa
Hudsonian Godwit
Hudsonian Godwit

The Hudsonian Godwit, Limosa haemastica, is a large shorebird....
, Limosa haemastica
Bar-tailed Godwit
Bar-tailed Godwit

The Bar-tailed Godwit is a large wader in the family Scolopacidae, which breeds on Arctic coasts and tundra mainly in the Old World, and winters on coasts in temperate and tropical regions of the Old World....
, Limosa lapponica
Marbled Godwit
Marbled Godwit

The Marbled Godwit, Limosa fedoa, is a large shorebird.Adults have long blue-grey hairy legs and a very long pink bill with a slight upward curve and dark at the tip....
, Limosa fedoa

In addition, there are two or 3 species of fossil
Fossil

Fossils are the preserved remains or trace fossil of animals, plants, and other organisms from the remote past. The totality of fossils, both discovered and undiscovered, and their placement in fossiliferous Rock formations and sedimentary rock layers is known as the fossil record....
prehistoric godwits. Limosa vanrossemi is known from the Monterey Formation
Monterey Formation

The Monterey Formation is an extensive Miocene oil-rich geology sedimentary formation in California, with massive outcroppings of the formation in areas of the California Coast Ranges, Peninsular Ranges, and on some of California's off-shore islands....
(Late Miocene
Miocene

The Miocene is a Geologic time scale of the Neogene period and extends from about 23.03 to 5.33 million years before the present. As with other older geologic periods, the rock beds that define the start and end are well identified but the exact dates of the start and end of the period are uncertain....
, approx. 6 mya
Mya (unit)

In astronomy, geology, and paleontology, mya or "m.y.a." is an abbreviation for "million years ago". Like the related unit bya, mya is traditionally written in lower case....
) of Lompoc, USA. Limosa lacrimosa is known from the Early Pliocene of Western Mongolia (Kurochkin, 1985). Limosa gypsorum of the Late Eocene
Eocene

The Eocene Geologic time scale is a major division of the geologic timescale and the second epoch of the Palaeogene period in the Cenozoic era....
(Montmartre Formation, some 35 mya) of France
France

France , officially the French Republic , is a country whose Metropolitan France is located in Western Europe and that also comprises various Overseas departments and territories of France....
may have actually been a curlew
Curlew

Curlew is the common name for the bird genus Numenius, a group of eight wader species, characterised by a long slender downcurved bill and mainly brown plumage with little seasonal change....
or some bird ancestral to both curlews and godwits (and possibly other Scolopacidae
Scolopacidae

The Scolopacidae are a large family of waders, . Many of the smaller species are often called "sandpipers", especially members of genera Calidris, Tringa and Actitis....
), or even a rail
Rallidae

The rails, or Rallidae, are a large Cosmopolitan distribution family of small to medium-sized birds. The family exhibits considerable Biodiversity and the family also includes the crakes, coots, and gallinules....
, being placed in the monotypic
Monotypic

In biology, a monotype is a alpha taxonomy group with only one biological type:In botany, a monotype is a taxon that has only one species: Ginkgo is a monotypic genus, while Ginkgoaceae is a monotypic family ....
genus Montirallus by some (Olson, 1985). Certainly, curlews and godwits are rather ancient and in some respects primitive lineages of scolopacids (Thomas et al., 2004), further complicating the assignment of such possibly basal

Basal (phylogenetics)

In phylogenetics, a basal clade is the earliest clade to branch in a larger clade; it appears at the base of a cladogram.A basal group form an outgroup to the rest of the clade, such as in the following example:...
forms.

A female Bar-tailed Godwit holds the record for the longest non-stop flight for a land bird.