The green sandpiper (''Tringa ochropus'') is a small wader (shorebird) of the

Old World The "Old World" is a term for Afro-Eurasia that originated in Europe , after Europeans became aware of the existence of the Americas. It is used to contrast the continents of Africa, Europe, and Asia, which were previously thought of by the ...

. The green sandpiper represents an ancient lineage of the genus '' Tringa''; its only close living relative is the

solitary sandpiper The solitary sandpiper (''Tringa solitaria'') is a small shorebird. The genus name ''Tringa'' is the New Latin name given to the green sandpiper by Aldrovandus in 1599 based on Ancient Greek ''trungas'', a thrush-sized, white-rumped, tail-bobbin ...

(''T. solitaria''). They both have brown wings with little light dots and a delicate but contrasting neck and chest pattern. In addition, both species nest in trees, unlike most other scolopacids. Given its

basal Basal or basilar is a term meaning ''base'', ''bottom'', or ''minimum''. Science * Basal (anatomy), an anatomical term of location for features associated with the base of an organism or structure * Basal (medicine), a minimal level that is nec ...

position in ''Tringa'', it is fairly unsurprising that suspected cases of hybridisation between this species and the

common sandpiper The common sandpiper (''Actitis hypoleucos'') is a small Palearctic wader. This bird and its American sister species, the spotted sandpiper (''A. macularia''), make up the genus ''Actitis''. They are parapatric and replace each other geographical ...

(''A. hypoleucos'') of the

sister genus In phylogenetics, a sister group or sister taxon, also called an adelphotaxon, comprises the closest relative(s) of another given unit in an evolutionary tree. Definition The expression is most easily illustrated by a cladogram: Taxon A and t ...

''Actitis'' have been

reported Dive is a Belgian electronic dance music project formed in 1990 by Dirk Ivens (Absolute Body Control, Klinik, Blok 57, Sonar). Dive's "audio trademark" is the experimental sound of abused drum machines, pulsating through crackling distortion ...

Taxonomy

The green sandpiper was formally described by the Swedish naturalist

Carl Linnaeus Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, ...

in 1758 in the tenth edition of his ''

Systema Naturae ' (originally in Latin written ' with the ligature æ) is one of the major works of the Swedish botanist, zoologist and physician Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) and introduced the Linnaean taxonomy. Although the system, now known as binomial nomen ...

'' under the current binomial name ''Tringa ochropus''. The genus name ''Tringa'' is the New Latin name given to the green sandpiper by Aldrovandus in 1599 based on

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic p ...

''trungas'', a thrush-sized, white-rumped, tail-bobbing wading bird mentioned by

Aristotle Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical Greece, Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatet ...

. The specific ''ochropus'' is from Ancient Greek ''okhros'', "ochre", and ''pous'', "foot". The species is

monotypic In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group (taxon) that contains only one immediately subordinate taxon. A monotypic species is one that does not include subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa. In the case of genera, the term "unispec ...

: no

subspecies In biological classification, subspecies is a rank below species, used for populations that live in different areas and vary in size, shape, or other physical characteristics ( morphology), but that can successfully interbreed. Not all specie ...

are recognised.

Description

This species is a somewhat plump wader with a dark greenish-brown back and wings, greyish head and breast and otherwise white underparts. The back is spotted white to varying extents, being maximal in the breeding adult, and less in winter and young birds. The legs and short bill are both dark green. It is conspicuous and characteristically patterned in flight, with the wings dark above and below and a brilliant white rump. The latter feature reliably distinguishes it from the slightly smaller but otherwise very similar

(''T. solitaria'') of

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...

. In flight it has a characteristic three-note whistle.

Distribution and migration

The green sandpiper breeds across subarctic

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located enti ...

and east across the

Palearctic The Palearctic or Palaearctic is the largest of the eight biogeographic realms of the Earth. It stretches across all of Eurasia north of the foothills of the Himalayas, and North Africa. The realm consists of several bioregions: the Euro-Sibe ...

and is a migratory

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweig ...

, wintering in southern Europe, the

Indian Subcontinent The Indian subcontinent is a physiographical region in Southern Asia. It is situated on the Indian Plate, projecting southwards into the Indian Ocean from the Himalayas. Geopolitically, it includes the countries of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India ...

Southeast Asia Southeast Asia, also spelled South East Asia and South-East Asia, and also known as Southeastern Asia, South-eastern Asia or SEA, is the geographical United Nations geoscheme for Asia#South-eastern Asia, south-eastern region of Asia, consistin ...

, and tropical

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

. Food is small invertebrate items picked off the mud as this species works steadily around the edges of its chosen pond. This is not a gregarious species, although sometimes small numbers congregate in suitable feeding areas. Green sandpiper is very much a bird of freshwater, and is often found in sites too restricted for other waders, which tend to like a clear all-round view.

Breeding

It lays 2–4 eggs in an old tree nest of another species, such as a fieldfare (''Turdus pilaris''). The clutch takes about three weeks to hatch.

Status

Widely distributed and not uncommon, the green sandpiper is not considered a threatened species by the

IUCN The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN; officially International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natu ...

on a global scale. It is one of the species to which the '' Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds'' (AEWA) applies.

Gallery

Green Sandpiper (Tringa ochropus) W IMG 6454.jpg, Wintering adult near Hodal, Faridabad district,

Haryana Haryana (; ) is an Indian state located in the northern part of the country. It was carved out of the former state of East Punjab on 1 Nov 1966 on a linguistic basis. It is ranked 21st in terms of area, with less than 1.4% () of India's land ...

, India Green sandpiper,Tringa ochropus.jpg, Wintering adult Bharathapuzha river Thrithala Palakkad, Kerala India

References

External links

Green sandpiper species text in The Atlas of Southern African Birds

Ageing and sexing (PDF; 4.0 MB) by Javier Blasco-Zumeta & Gerd-Michael Heinze
* * * * * * * * {{Taxonbar, from=Q28450 green sandpiper green sandpiper Birds of Eurasia green sandpiper green sandpiper