godwit

Godwits are a group of four large, long-billed, long-legged and strongly migratory waders of the bird genus ''Limosa''. Their long bills allow them to probe deeply in the sand for aquatic worms and molluscs. In their winter range, they flock together where food is plentiful. They frequent tidal shorelines, breeding in northern climates in summer and migrating south in winter. A female bar-tailed godwit made a flight of 29,000 km (18,000 mi), flying of it without stopping. In 2020 a male bar-tailed godwit flew about non-stop in its migration from Alaska to New Zealand, previously a record for avian non-stop flight.
In October 2022, a 5 month old, male bar-tailed godwit was tracked from Alaska to Tasmania, a trip that took 11 days, and recorded a non-stop flight of .

The godwits can be distinguished from the curlews by their straight or slightly upturned bills, and from the dowitchers by their longer legs. The winter plumages are fairly drab, but three species have reddish underparts when breeding. The females are appreciably larger than the males.

Godwits were once popular as food in the British Isles. Sir Thomas Browne writing in about 1682 noted that godwits "were accounted the daintiest dish in England".

Taxonomy

The genus ''Limosa'' was introduced by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson in 1760 with the black-tailed godwit (''Limosa limosa'') as the type species. The genus name ''Limosa'' is from Latin and means "muddy", from ''limus'', "mud". The English name "godwit" was first recorded in about 1416–17 and is believed to imitate the bird's call.

The genus contains four living species:

Fossil species

In addition, there are two or three species of fossil prehistoric godwits. ''Limosa vanrossemi'' is known from the Monterey Formation (Late Miocene, approx. 6 mya) of Lompoc, United States. ''Limosa lacrimosa'' is known from the Early Pliocene of Western Mongolia ( Kurochkin, 1985). ''Limosa gypsorum'' of the Late Eocene ( Montmartre Formation, some 35 mya) of France may have actually been a curlew or some bird ancestral to both curlews and godwits (and possibly other Scolopacidae), or even a rail, being placed in the monotypic genus '' Montirallus'' by some (Olson, 1985). Certainly, curlews and godwits are rather ancient and in some respects primitive lineages of scolopacids, further complicating the assignment of such possibly basal forms.

In a 2001 study comparing the ratios cerebrum to brain volumes in various dinosaur species, Hans C. E. Larsson found that more derived dinosaurs generally had proportionally more voluminous cerebrum. ''Limosa gypsorum'', then regarded as a '' Numenius'' species, was a discrepancy in this general trend. ''L. gypsorum'' was only 63% of the way between a typical reptilian ratio and that of modern birds. However, this may be explainable if the endocast was distorted, as it had been previously depicted in the past by Deschaseaux, who is described by Larsson as calling the endocast "slightly anteroposteriorly sheared and laterally compressed."

Citations

General sources

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* Larsson, H. C. E. 2001. Endocranial anatomy of ''Carcharodontosaurus saharicus'' (Theropoda: Allosauroidea) and its implications for theropod brain evolution. pp. 19–33. In: ''Mesozoic Vertebrate Life''. Tanke, D. H., Carpenter, K., Skrepnick, M. W. (eds.). Indiana University Press.
* Olson, Storrs L. (1985): Section X.D.2.b. "Scolopacidae". In: Farner, D.S.; King, J.R. & Parkes, Kenneth C. (eds.): ''Avian Biology'' 8: 174–175. Academic Press, New York.

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Taxa named by Mathurin Jacques Brisson