
Audubon Scientist Stanley Senner Recognized for Conservation Work
The award acknowledges Senner's lifelong dedication to preserving shorebirds and the places they need all across The Americas.
Breeding adult. Photo: Lisa Hupp/USFWS/Flickr (CC-BY-NC-ND-2.0)
Calidris himantopus
Conservation status | Counts of migrants in some areas suggest that the species may have increased in recent decades. |
---|---|
Family | Sandpipers |
Habitat | Shallow pools, mudflats, marshes; tundra in summer. Typically on fresh water, including ponds and marshes with extensive shallows. Even in coastal areas, tends to occur on lagoons or ponds, not on tidal flats. Breeds on tundra, especially in sedge meadows with raised ridges for nest sites. |
Forages mostly by wading in shallow water and probing vertically with its bill in the mud of the bottom, often thrusting its head underwater. Sometimes picks insects from surface of water. Feeding is similar to that of dowitchers, and it often associates closely with dowitcher flocks.
4. Pale cream to olive-green, heavily dotted with brown. Incubation is by both parents, 19-21 days. Female incubates at night, male during the day. Young: Downy young leave nest soon after hatching, find all their own food. Both parents may tend young at first, but female usually departs in less than a week, male after about 2 weeks. Young can fly at about 17-18 days.
Downy young leave nest soon after hatching, find all their own food. Both parents may tend young at first, but female usually departs in less than a week, male after about 2 weeks. Young can fly at about 17-18 days.
Includes insects, mollusks, seeds. Diet not well known, but includes a wide variety of aquatic insects (including fly larvae and beetles), marine worms, snails; also the seeds, leaves, and roots of aquatic plants.
Male displays over breeding territory by flying slowly with shallow wingbeats, calling incessantly, then gliding with wings in shallow "V" while giving guttural song. In courtship, spectacular aerial displays; male pursues female in the air, gets in front of her and then raises wings high over his back, singing as he plummets. Nest site is in a dry spot on low ridge or on top of sedge hummock, often surrounded by water or wet ground. Nest is shallow depression in vegetation, with little or no lining; male makes nest scrapes, female chooses one.
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.
The award acknowledges Senner's lifelong dedication to preserving shorebirds and the places they need all across The Americas.
Let us send you the latest in bird and conservation news.
Visit your local Audubon center, join a chapter, or help save birds with your state program.
Membership benefits include one year of Audubon magazine and the latest on birds and their habitats. Your support helps secure a future for birds at risk.
Our email newsletter shares the latest programs and initiatives.