Wood Sandpiper | Tringa glareola

Voice

A high, dry, rapid chiff-chiff-chiff, usually three or four notes and often called together by small groups as they flush. When alarmed a sharp chip. In spring the yodelling display call lee-lee-lee may also be heard.

Identification

Slim and fairly long-legged, with a straight, medium-length bill and yellowish-green legs. Upperparts grey-brown with numerous white spots, giving the back a speckled look; breast finely streaked grey. A long, prominent white supercilium reaching well behind the eye. Juveniles are warmer brown with buff spots. In flight a white rump, a finely barred tail, plain brown upperwing and pale underwing; the toes project just beyond the tail.

Confusion species

Green Sandpiper (Tringa ochropus) is darker and more compact, with barely spotted upperparts, a short supercilium only in front of the eye and a blackish underwing contrasting sharply with the white rump. Marsh Sandpiper (Tringa stagnatilis) is paler and longer-legged, with a needle-fine bill and a white wedge reaching far up the back. Common Sandpiper (Actitis hypoleucos) has shorter legs, a plain back and bobs constantly.

Habitat

Shallow fresh water with vegetated edges: flooded fields and meadows, rice fields, marsh edges, fish ponds, sewage ponds, oases and temporary rain pools in the desert. Largely avoids salt water and open mudflats. On passage often in loose groups, sometimes dozens together.

Range and movements

Passage migrant throughout the region, in spring mainly in April and early May, in autumn from July into October. In the Maghreb on passage at all wetlands of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia and in the oases of the Sahara; winters there at most in small numbers. In Egypt very common on passage in the Nile Delta and Valley, with wintering birds. In Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria a common migrant, especially in the Jordan and Beit She'an valleys. In Arabia a common migrant, recorded year-round in the Emirates and fairly common in early winter but scarce later; wintering birds also in Oman, Yemen, south-west Saudi Arabia and the marshes of Iraq. Breeds from Scotland and Fennoscandia through the taiga to Kamchatka; also winters in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Australia.

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

How and when to look

After spring rain the plains of southern Morocco, southern Tunisia and the Negev fill with pools, and small groups of Wood Sandpipers often stand there, far from any permanent water. In April the fish ponds of the Beit She'an Valley and the rice fields and farmland of the Nile Delta are good for large numbers.

Conservation status

Not globally threatened (LC), and with hundreds of thousands of pairs in Fennoscandia and the taiga one of the most numerous waders of the boreal zone. At the southern edge of its breeding range it has declined through drainage. For migrants in the region the supply of shallow fresh water matters most, and it is under pressure from drainage, desiccation and agricultural intensification; the trapping of migrants along the Egyptian coast also affects waders.

Scientific name

Tringa glareola | Linnaeus, 1758

Linnaeus described the species in 1758 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. He introduced the genus Tringa in that same work. Tringa is the Neo-Latin name Aldrovandi gave to the green sandpiper, after Ancient Greek trungas, a thrush-sized, white-rumped, tail-bobbing wading bird mentioned by Aristotle. glareola is Latin, a diminutive of glarea 'gravel', after the gravelly shores the bird frequents. The specimen the first description was based on came from Sweden.