Sandpipers and allies | Scolopacidae

Strandlopers en snippen | Correlimos y agachadizas | Sandpipers and allies

The bill is not only long and sensitive but mobile: the tip of the upper mandible alone can be raised, so the bird can seize a worm deep in the mud without opening the bill along its whole length. Length and curvature differ greatly from species to species, so that birds feeding side by side on the same flat reach different depths and different prey. Forty-two species in ten genera occur in this guide; most are migrants from North America that winter along the Pacific coast, on riverbanks and at the lakes of the high Andes, while the snipes (Gallinago) also breed here in boggy parts of the páramo and puna. The plumage is grey-brown and finely marked, and changes completely twice a year: a conspicuous breeding dress and a plain winter one. Four pear-shaped eggs in a scrape, chicks that find their own food from the first day, and outside the breeding season large flocks that wheel as one over the tidal flats.