Heteroscelus brevipes
The bill is rather long and straight.Legs are short and yellow. In non-breeding plumage it is grey above and almost white below. There is a white eyebrow. The eyes are dark brown, bill black, short legs and feet bright yellow. In breeding plumage, the entire underparts are conspicuously barred dark brown. Immature birds are similar to adults in non-breeding plumage. This species is also known as the Grey or Grey-rumped Sandpiper or the Ashen Tringine Sandpiper. Female slightly larger. Juvenile like non-breeding adult, but with whitish spots on upperparts.
Not Threatened.
The bill is rather long and straight.Legs are short and yellow. In non-breeding plumage it is grey above and almost white below. There is a white eyebrow. The eyes are dark brown, bill black, short legs and feet bright yellow. In breeding plumage, the entire underparts are conspicuously barred dark brown. Immature birds are similar to adults in non-breeding plumage. This species is also known as the Grey or Grey-rumped Sandpiper or the Ashen Tringine Sandpiper. Female slightly larger. Juvenile like non-breeding adult, but with whitish spots on upperparts.
is a medium-sized wader (23_27 cm, 80-162 g, wingspan 51 cm), with long wings and tail.
Taxonomy:
- Totanus brevipes Vieillot, 1816, Timor. Sometimes placed in genus Tringa. Forms superspecies with H. incanus, with which sometimes considered conspecific. Monotypic. (source: Handbook of the Birds of World)
Distribution:
- NC & NE Siberia in Putorana Mts, and from Verkhoyansk Mts and Transbaikalia E to Anadyrland; probably also Kamchatka and N Kuril Is. Winters from Taiwan, Malay Peninsula and Philippines through Indonesia, New Guinea and Solomon Is to Australia, a few reaching New Zealand; also Fiji and Tuvalu.
They are usually seen in small flocks on sheltered coasts with reefs and rock platforms or with intertidal mudflats. They are also found in intertidal rocky, coral or stony reefs, platforms and islets that are exposed at high tide, also shores of rock, shingle, gravel and shells and on intertidal mudflats in embayments, estuaries and coastal lagoons, especially those fringed with mangroves.
Feed by day on polychaete worms, molluscs, crustaceans, insects and, occasionally, fish. Crabs form large part of non-breeding diet. Crabs often washed on water's edge. They like small crabs. They dart about, bobbing and teetering between runs and locate prey by sight or by probing.
Breeds late May to late August. Nest in shallow depresion.