Spotted Redshank
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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 Spotted Redshank (the dark bird in front) and other shanks
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| Tringa erythropus (Pallas, 1764) |
The Spotted Redshank Tringa erythropus is a wader in the large family Scolopacidae, the typical waders. It forms a close-knit group with the Greater Yellowlegs and the Greenshank, which among them show all the basic leg and foot colors of the shanks, demonstrating that this character is paraphyletic (Pereira & Baker, 2005). These three species are the largest shanks apart from the Willet, which is altogether more robustly built.
This is an Arctic bird, breeding across Scandinavia and northern Asia. It is a migratory species, wintering around the Mediterranean and in south Asia, usually on fresh water. It occasionally is a vagrant to North America. This species nests on open boggy taiga, laying four eggs in a ground scrape.
The Spotted Redshanks is 29-33 cm long. It is black in breeding plumage, and very pale in winter. It has a red legs and bill, and shows a white oval on the back in flight. Juveniles are brown above and have uniformly barred underparts.
The Spotted Redshank is replaced as a breeding bird further south by the Common Redshank, which has a shorter bill and legs, and is brown above and white with some dark patterning below, becoming somewhat lighter-toned in winter.
The breeding song is a creaking whistle teu-hu, the alarm call a kyip-kyip-kyip. Like most waders, it feed on small invertebrates.
The Spotted Redshank is one of the species to which the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA) applies.
[edit] References
- BirdLife International (2004). Tringa erythropus. 2006 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN 2006. Retrieved on 05 May 2006. Database entry includes justification for why this species is of least concern
- Pereira, Sérgio Luiz & Baker, Alan J. (2005): Multiple Gene Evidence for Parallel Evolution and Retention of Ancestral Morphological States in the Shanks (Charadriiformes: Scolopacidae). Condor 107(3): 514–526. DOI: 10.1650/0010-5422(2005)107[0514:MGEFPE]2.0.CO;2 HTML abstract
