Distribution and Habitat
The Broad-billed Sandpiper is strongly migratory, spending the non-breeding season from easternmost Africa, through south and south-east Asia to Australasia. It is highly gregarious, and will form flocks with other calidrid waders, particularly Dunlins. Despite its European breeding range, this species is rare on passage in western Europe, presumably because of the south-easterly migration route.
This bird's breeding habitat is wet taiga bogs in Arctic northern Europe and Siberia. The male performs an aerial display during courtship. They nest in a ground scrape, laying 4 eggs.
They forage in soft mud on marshes and the coast, mainly picking up food by sight. They mostly eat insects and other small invertebrates.
The Broad-billed Sandpiper is one of the species to which the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA) applies.
Read more about this topic: Broad-billed Sandpiper
Famous quotes containing the words distribution and/or habitat:
“In this distribution of functions, the scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state, he is, Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men’s thinking.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Nature is the mother and the habitat of man, even if sometimes a stepmother and an unfriendly home.”
—John Dewey (1859–1952)