Sharp Tailed Sandpiper

Once again it Wednesday and time for me to show you an Australian bird.  This week it is the Sharp tailed Sandpiper - Calidris acuminata. While staying with my daughter in Innisfail, Queensland, I visited Barra Farm as often as I could because the farmer asked me to count the birds on his farm.  It was only 10 minutes from her home.  Between photographs I will give you some information about this bird and show you a video at the end.

 

The Sharp-tailed Sandpiper is about eight inches in length. It has rusty-brown, black and white back, wings and tail and a light cream to tan lower chest and belly. It has a reddish-brown cap in its head, a sharp, black bill; long white to gray legs; and, as its name implies, a sharp tail.
 In flight, white sides to dark centre of rump; thin wing stripe.

 

 

 

Breeding adults are a rich brown with darker feather centres above, and white underneath apart from a buff breast. They have a light superciliary line above the eye and a chestnut crown. In winter, Sharp-tailed Sandpipers are grey above. The juveniles are brightly patterned above with rufous colouration and white mantle stripes.

 The sharp-tailed sandpiper breeds on the Siberian tundra and winters in Australia and New Zealand. Migrating birds appear in Alaska and in small numbers along the West Coast in the fall and less often inland and on East Coast.

 

Little is known of the breeding habits of this species, although it nests on the ground, and the male has a display flight.

 

 

The male sharp-tailed sandpiper mates with more than one female. The female build a nest of grass on the tundra. She lays an average of four eggs. The chicks hatch in 19-23 days. They leave the nest after a day or so and begin to feed themselves. The fledge when they are 18-21 days old.

 

These birds forage on grasslands and mudflats, picking up food by sight, sometimes by probing. They mainly eat insects and other invertebrates like

mosquito larvae. It also eats mollusks and crustaceans.

 

Habitat fresh or salt wetlands – the muddy edges of lagoons, swamps, lakes, dams, soaks, sewage farms, temporary flood waters.   Most alike is the Pectoral Sandpiper, but that species has slimmer look, longer neck, shorter legs, more upright stance and longer, more slender, down curved bill. Abundant in SE Australia, common elsewhere. .

 

Calls, when flushed, a quick ‘pliep’, and rapid, high, scratchy, squeaky trills like the highest of fairy-wren trills.   Also has chatterings with intermixed soft, low and high squeaky sounds like the chatter of Welcome Swallows.

 

There is little information on the lifespan of the sharp-tailed sandpiper, but the oldest ringed bird was known to be at least five years and nine months old

 

 

 

  

It breeds in the boggy tundra of northeast Asia and is strongly migratory, wintering in south east Asia and Australasia. It occurs as a rare autumn migrant to North America, but in western Europe only as a very rare vagrant.

The video I have edited will show you a few of the pools at Barra Farm and near the beginning shows you the cages that they keep the small Barracuda fish in so that the Cormorants do not eat them and you will see a man throwing food to them.   You will also see men that have drained one of the pools and are collecting the Barramundi fish.  Further on in the video you will see a mixture of waders to give you an idea for how big or small the Sharp tailed Sandpipers are to other waders. In the last clip there is a lone Sandpiper on Mission Beach.

You can access the video at

 http://youtu.be/HAHH_YQaado

If there is a black space below, click it and the video will appear.

I hope you enjoyed this post.

 

Thank you for visiting me blog.

 

Thanks to all who left comments yesterday.  I appreaciate them all.

I am linking this post to Wild Bird Wednesday