Common sandpiper

Voice

A clear, high, descending tsee-wee-wee, usually of three to five notes, given as the bird flies off along the bank. In display flight a long rhythmic titti-weeti-weeti over streams and shingle. Heard mainly from April to July, but the flight call continues on passage into October, including at night.

Identification

Small and long-bodied, brown above and white below, with a striking white wedge pushing up between the bend of the wing and the brown breast side. The bill is dark with a fleshy base, the legs grey-green. In flight a narrow white wingbar and the low progress on short stiff beats broken by glides. Breeding birds are finely dark-streaked, winter birds plainer.

Confusion species

The Tringa sandpipers cause the trouble, mainly Green and Wood Sandpiper. Decisive are the constant tail-bobbing, the white wedge before the wing, the low gliding flight on flickering wings and the short legs. Green and Wood Sandpiper show a white rump, longer legs and tower away calling loudly; Actitis hugs the water.

Habitat

Margins of running and standing fresh water: streams, gravel rivers, reservoirs, canals, sand pits and even harbour walls. Breeds along fast upper courses and on vegetated shingle bars in hill and mountain country. On passage it uses almost any waterside, including docks, and coastal mud and saltmarsh.

Range and movements

Breeds across nearly all of Europe, with the bulk in Scandinavia and on hill and mountain rivers, and winters in Africa and in small numbers around the Mediterranean. In the Netherlands a very scarce breeder but a common passage migrant on all waters. In Spain it breeds on northern mountain rivers and winters on the coast.

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

Where and when to look

Walk a canal, a harbour mole or the shore of a sand pit early in the morning in late July or early August; migrants spread out along the waterline and usually sit alone. Watch for the bobbing rear end and the low whirring escape flight as a bird flushes ahead of you.

Conservation status

Across much of Europe the species is slowly declining through the canalisation of streams, water-level management in reservoirs and recreational disturbance of shorelines. As a migrant it remains numerous and widespread. The Dutch breeding population has always been tiny and stays vulnerable for lack of natural river dynamics.