Speckled green legs
| Speckled green legs | ||||||||
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Spotted Greenshank ( Tringa guttifer ) |
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| Systematics | ||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||
| Tringa guttifer | ||||||||
| ( Nordmann , 1835) |
The spotted greenshank ( Tringa guttifer ), also known as Nordmann's greenshank , short- footed water strider or Sakhalin greenshank , is a rare wading bird that is native to East Asia . It is named after the Finnish zoologist Alexander von Nordmann , from whom the first description of the species comes.
description
This bird from the family of snipe birds (Scolopacidae) reaches a length of 29 to 32 centimeters. Its beak is slightly curved upwards and two-colored, with its front part being black and brownish or greenish in color from the center to the base. The eyes are dark brown. Its short legs are colored yellow. There are webbed feet between the three front toes. The black top of the adult birds shows distinct white spots during the breeding season. The white head and the upper neck area are heavily dashed. The lower part of the neck and the white breast are marked by distinct blackish, sickle-shaped spots. The rear part is white. The reins are dark. During the flight, white under tail coverts and a rather greyish colored tail can be seen. The young birds are more brown in color above than the non-breeding adult birds and have whitish notches on the shoulder blades and umbrella feathers. The wing-top edges are pale leather-colored and the chest with the faint dark side stripes shows a washed-out brown. His call consists of different tones that sound like kwork or gwaak.
distribution
The spotted green leg breeds in Russia along the coasts of the Sea of Okhotsk and on the island of Sakhalin . The wintering places are not yet fully recorded. Population surveys are known from the People's Republic of China , Hong Kong , Taiwan , South Korea (in the Saemangeum nature reserve ), Bangladesh , Thailand , Cambodia , Vietnam and Malaysia . There are or have been other sightings in Japan , North Korea , India , Singapore , the Philippines , Indonesia and Myanmar .
The migration to the wintering areas begins with the adult birds shortly after breeding and falls accordingly mainly in the months of July and August. The young birds, on the other hand, migrate from September.
Habitat and way of life
Its breeding ground consists of areas with sparse larch vegetation for nesting sites and damp coastal meadows as well as the Wadden Sea for foraging. The wintering places are at river mouths, on the Wadden Sea, in lowland swamps and occasionally on damp meadows, salt pans and rice fields.
The spotted green thigh is one of the few waders that build a real nest and not just breed in a shallow hollow in the ground. To build nests, the spotted green leg uses larch twigs, mosses and lichen, which it collects partly on the ground and partly in trees. Unlike most waders, the nest is in the branches of a larch, usually 2 to 4 meters above the ground. Like the other waders, the young birds flee their nests and jump out of the nest soon after they hatch. Both parent birds not only build the nest together and alternately incubate the clutch, but, unlike most waders, are also involved in the rearing and management of the chicks.
Danger
Nordmann's Greenshank is one of the endangered waders of East Asia. Disturbances, habitat destruction and pollution have reduced the population to between 500 and 1000 specimens. In Russia the grazing reindeer herds destroy the vegetation in which it builds its nesting grounds and in some places it falls victim to hunters.
The IUCN classifies the Nordmann's Greenshank as endangered ( endangered one). The population is estimated at only 500 to 1,000 sexually mature individuals, the population continues to decline. The main cause of the decline is the development of coastal areas observed throughout Asia as part of industrial development or the establishment of aquafarms. For example, the Saemangeum , an important mudflats on the coast of South Korea for numerous waders , was recently destroyed by development measures.
literature
- Dominic Couzens : Rare Birds - Survivors, Evolution Losers and the Lost. Haupt Verlag, Bern 2011, ISBN 978-3-258-07629-4 .
Web links
- BirdLife factsheet - Tringa guttifer (English)
- Tringa guttifer inthe IUCN 2013 Red List of Threatened Species . Listed by: BirdLife International, 2012. Retrieved October 27, 2013.
Single receipts
- ↑ a b Couzens, p. 86
- ↑ BirdLife factsheet on the speckled green leg , accessed on August 6, 2011
- ↑ Couzens, p. 88