Red Knot | Calidris canutus

Voice

A soft, nasal knut or wutt; flocks give a low murmuring.

Identification

Sturdy and short-legged, with a straight black bill about as long as the head and greyish-green legs. In winter plumage plain pale grey above with fine dark shaft streaks and pale fringes, white below with finely streaked breast and flanks, and a faint white supercilium. In breeding plumage head and underparts are brick-red and the upperparts spangled black, rufous and silver-grey. Juveniles have neatly scaled grey upperparts and a faint peachy breast. In flight a narrow white wingbar and a pale grey, finely barred rump.

Confusion species

Great Knot (Calidris tenuirostris) is larger, with a longer, slightly decurved bill, heavier black spotting on the breast and a whiter rump; in breeding plumage the breast is spotted black rather than red. Dunlin (Calidris alpina) is smaller, with a longer, decurved bill and a dark centre to the rump. Sanderling (Calidris alba) is much whiter with a black shoulder patch. In breeding plumage it can recall Bar-tailed Godwit (Limosa lapponica), which is much larger and longer-billed.

Habitat

Extensive tidal flats of mud and sand, especially where shellfish are plentiful, and seagrass beds in shallow bays; at high tide it roosts in tight flocks on sandbanks and islets. Rarely inland.

Range and movements

Scarce along Morocco's Atlantic coast, but Dakhla Bay in Western Sahara holds thousands in winter, the largest concentration on Africa's Atlantic coast north of Mauritania. In Tunisia large numbers winter in the Gulf of Gabès and around Kerkennah and Djerba. Along the Libyan and Egyptian Mediterranean coast and in Israel and Lebanon a scarce passage migrant. In Arabia, Barr al Hikman (Oman) is by far the most important site; elsewhere along the Gulf (Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait), the Red Sea and in Yemen scarce to fairly scarce. Beyond the region it breeds on the high-Arctic tundra of Siberia, North America and Greenland and winters on the coasts of western Europe, West and southern Africa, South Asia, Australasia and the Americas.

• Resident
• Winter visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
• Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
• dark = core range, pale = thinly spread

How and when to look

On a falling tide, scan the dense flocks in the Gulf of Gabès or Dakhla Bay; knots there often mix with Dunlins and Bar-Tailed Godwits. In April and May the first birds in brick-red breeding plumage appear shortly before they leave for the north.

Conservation status

Near Threatened. Several subspecies are declining steeply through loss of tidal flats along the flyways, overharvesting of shellfish and changes on the Arctic breeding grounds. The West African winter population, to which the Dakhla birds belong, depends on a small number of large wetlands; the Gulf of Gabès and Barr al Hikman are of international importance.

Scientific name

Calidris canutus | (Linnaeus, 1758)

Linnaeus described the species in 1758 as Tringa Canutus; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Calidris was introduced in 1804 by Merrem. Calidris goes back to Ancient Greek kalidris or skalidris, a name Aristotle used for an unidentified grey waterside bird. canutus is traditionally linked to King Cnut, from the tale of him commanding the tide and the knot's habit of feeding along the tideline, though there is no historical foundation for this. Another explanation is that the name imitates the bird's grunting call. The specimen the first description was based on came from Sweden.