Breeding adult male. Photo: Aaron Maizlish/Flickr (CC BY NC 2.0)
Arenaria interpres
| Conservation status | Common and widespread. Very wide wintering range and remote breeding range help to ensure survival. |
|---|---|
| Family | Sandpipers |
| Habitat | Beaches, mudflats, jetties, rocky shores; in summer, tundra. Mostly coastal in migration and winter, favoring rocky shorelines, rock jetties, or beaches covered with seaweed or debris. May also feed on mudflats or on plowed fields near coast. Nests on open ground in arctic, including wet tundra and dry rocky ridges. |
Best known for habit of inserting bill under stones, shells, etc., and flipping them over to find food underneath. Several birds may work together to overturn a larger object. Often probes under seaweed or debris. Can be a nuisance in tern colonies at times, including on wintering grounds on Pacific islands, where it may puncture and eat the contents of many eggs.
4, sometimes 2-3. Olive-green to olive-buff, blotched with dark brown. Incubation is by both sexes (but female does more), 22-24 days. Young: Downy young leave nest shortly after hatching. Both parents care for young at first, but male takes greater role, and female usually departs before young are old enough to fly. Male leads young to food at first, but young feed themselves. Age at first flight 19-21 days, usually independent thereafter.
Downy young leave nest shortly after hatching. Both parents care for young at first, but male takes greater role, and female usually departs before young are old enough to fly. Male leads young to food at first, but young feed themselves. Age at first flight 19-21 days, usually independent thereafter.
Variable, includes insects, crustaceans, mollusks. In breeding season mostly insects, also spiders, seeds, berries, moss. At other seasons eats crustaceans (including barnacles, crabs, amphipods), mollusks, worms, sea urchins, small fish. Will eat carrion and will eat food scraps thrown out in garbage dumps. Sometimes eats eggs of other birds.
In courtship, male pursues female, in the air and on the ground. Male may approach female in hunched posture, raising and lowering tail. Nest site is on ground, either in the open or concealed among rocks or under plants. Nest (built by female) is shallow depression with slight lining of leaves.
Audubon’s scientists have used 140 million bird observations and sophisticated climate models to project how climate change will affect this bird’s range in the future.
Zoom in to see how this species’s current range will shift, expand, and contract under increased global temperatures.
Choose a temperature scenario below to see which threats will affect this species as warming increases. The same climate change-driven threats that put birds at risk will affect other wildlife and people, too.
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