The Wood Sandpiper, Tringa glareola, is a small wader. It is the smallest of the shanks, and breeds in subarctic wetlands from the Scottish Highlands across Europe and Asia. It will nest on the ground, or reuse the old tree nest of another bird, such as the Fieldfare.
It resembles a longer-legged, elegant Green, or Solitary Sandpiper with a short fine bill, brown back and longer yellowish legs. It differs from the first of those species in that the white rump patch is smaller and less contrasting, and Solitary lacks a white rump anyway.
They migrate to Africa and southern Asia, particularly India. This bird is usually found on fresh water during migration and wintering.
These birds forage by probing in shallow water or on wet mud. They mainly eat insects, and similar small prey.
Further reading
Shorebirds by Hayman, Marchant and Prater, ISBN 0-7099-2034-2
The WoodSandpiper at Pauline Cove on Herschel Island on August 9, 1996 was the Yukon's first and Canada's second documented occurrence of this species.
Canada's first WoodSandpiper was observed on November 3-9, 1994 at Massett on the Queen Charlotte Islands, BC (Hamel and Hearne 1994).
While the WoodSandpiper is relatively common in spring on the central and outer Aleutians (Armstrong 1995) it is considered accidental in the Beaufort Sea area (Johnson and Herter 1989).
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