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Marsh Sandpiper | Tringa stagnatilis
Poelruiter | Archibebe Fino
The Marsh Sandpiper is a pale sandpiper with a needle-fine straight bill and strikingly long legs, like a small, finely built Common Greenshank. It is a common non-breeding visitor to freshwater pans and dams throughout the region, often in loose groups among other waders.
Voice
A repeated, soft and rather monotonous tchoo or kyoo, higher and thinner than Common Greenshank and usually given singly; on take-off sometimes a quick series chik-chik-chik.
Recording: Julien Birard — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
22–25 cm. In non-breeding plumage pale grey above with fine pale fringes, pure white below and on the face, with a broad pale supercilium that makes the face look pale. The bill is black, straight and very thin, as long as the head or slightly longer. The legs are long and yellowish-green to olive-green; in flight they project well beyond the tail. In flight the wing is plain dark without a wing bar, and a white wedge runs from the rump far up the back. In breeding plumage, sometimes partly seen in March and April, it has black spotting on the upperparts and fine spots on the breast.
Confusion species
Common Greenshank Tringa nebularia is clearly larger and heavier, with a thicker, slightly upturned bill and shorter legs relative to the body. Wood Sandpiper Tringa glareola is browner and spotted, with a white rump that does not extend up the back and shorter legs. Black-Winged Stilt Himantopus himantopus is larger, black and white, with red legs.
Habitat
Shallow fresh and brackish waters with open margins: pans, farm dams, flooded grassland, sewage ponds, marshes and salt pans; less at the coast, where mainly in lagoons and salt works. It often wades belly-deep and picks quickly and precisely at the surface.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.
Range and movements
Over most of the region: common in South Africa (especially the highveld and KwaZulu-Natal), Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mozambique and Malawi, and also in Namibia, Angola and Eswatini, scarcer in Lesotho and the arid west. Beyond the region it breeds in the steppes from eastern Europe to Central Asia and winters in sub-Saharan Africa, the Indian subcontinent, South-East Asia and Australia.
- Resident
- Summer visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- Winter visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Between October and March at almost any shallow pan or dam with open shores; compare it on the spot with Common Greenshanks and Wood Sandpipers. The combination of needle bill, pale face and long legs is diagnostic, and in flight the white back wedge with the projecting legs.
Conservation status
Not threatened. The world population appears stable. It depends on shallow wetlands and so is locally sensitive to drainage and pollution, but in the region it benefits from dams and sewage ponds.
Scientific name
Tringa stagnatilis | (Bechstein, 1803)
Bechstein described the species in 1803 as Totanus stagnatilis; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Tringa was introduced in 1758 by Linnaeus. 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. stagnatilis is Latin, from stagnum 'pool, marsh', and means 'of the pools'. The specimen the first description was based on came from Germany.