Common redshank

Voice

Highly vocal. The call is a clear, mournful whistled teu-hu-hu falling in pitch; in alarm an insistent, sharp tyip-tyip-tyip-tyip from a fence post. Song-flight over the meadow produces a yodelling, accelerating tululu-tululu. Heard mainly from March to June, but also from disturbed birds on winter mudflats.

Identification

A medium wader with fairly long orange-red legs and a straight bill, orange-red at the base and black towards the tip. Upperparts warm brown with dark spotting, breast and flanks finely streaked; in winter far greyer and plainer, the legs a duller orange. In flight the broad white trailing edges to both wings and the white wedge running up the back settle it.

Confusion species

Spotted Redshank is slimmer and longer-legged, with a longer bill red only at the base of the lower mandible, no white trailing edge and a white oval on the back. Marsh Sandpiper is finer, paler, with a needle-fine bill and greenish-grey legs. Juvenile Redshanks show orange-yellow legs and warmly fringed coverts and are regularly called Ruff.

Habitat

Damp, herb-rich grassland, saltmarsh and marsh edges with short vegetation and shallow pools. Outside the breeding season almost wholly tied to mudflats, mussel beds, brackish creeks and saltpans. Feeds by probing and pecking in the soft surface layer of mud, taking worms, crustaceans and small snails.

Range and movements

Breeds from Iceland and Scandinavia to the Black Sea, and the Dutch saltmarshes and peat meadows hold a substantial share of the western European population. Northern birds move to Atlantic coasts. In Spain it breeds locally in the saltpans of the Ebro delta and Andalusia and winters in numbers in Doñana and the Bay of Cádiz.

• Resident
• Breeding (summer)
• Winter
• Passage
• Migration direction
• dark = core range, pale = thinly spread

Where and when to look

April and May are best: walk a saltmarsh or extensively managed polder at sunrise and watch for birds alarming from fence posts. On tidal flats, station yourself at a high-tide roost on the rising tide, when parties gather among Oystercatchers and Dunlin and can be compared side by side.

Conservation status

As a breeder in farmed grassland it has declined sharply through drainage, early mowing and predation of nests and chicks; saltmarsh populations hold up better. Wintering birds are sensitive to disturbance, shellfish fishery and the loss of quiet high-tide roosts. Extensive grazing and high water tables demonstrably help.