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Lesser Yellowlegs | Tringa flavipes
Kleine geelpootruiter | Archibebe patigualdo chico
The Lesser Yellowlegs is a slender, finely built sandpiper with long, bright yellow legs. It breeds in the boreal zone of Alaska and Canada and migrates through the guide area to South America; many birds also winter in Mexico and Central America. Outside the breeding season it often feeds in flocks, on fresh and brackish water.
Voice
A soft, flat tew or tew-tew, usually of one or two notes; softer and less urgent than the series of Greater Yellowlegs. When alarmed also a repeated kip.
Recording: Tony Rinaud — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
23–25 cm, slender, with a straight, thin, dark bill about as long as the head and long, bright yellow legs. In non-breeding plumage grey-brown above with fine white spots, a finely streaked grey neck and breast, a white belly, a white eye-ring and a pale line between bill and eye. In breeding plumage blacker on the back, with black and white spots and more streaking on the neck and breast. Juveniles are browner, with pale spots on the upperparts. In flight a square white rump, a finely barred tail, no wing bar and projecting yellow legs.
Confusion species
Greater Yellowlegs Tringa melanoleuca is larger and heavier, with a longer bill (about one and a half times the length of the head), often slightly upturned and greyish at the base, and gives louder calls in series of three or four notes; in mixed flocks the difference in size helps. Solitary Sandpiper Tringa solitaria has greenish legs and a dark rump, Stilt Sandpiper Calidris himantopus a slightly drooping bill and greenish legs, and Wilson's Phalarope Phalaropus tricolor a needle-thin bill and shorter legs.
Habitat
Shallow margins of fresh and brackish lagoons, wet grassland, flooded fields, rice fields, shrimp ponds, salt pans, mudflats and the edges of lakes and reservoirs, from the lowlands to the plateau. It walks actively through shallow water picking insects, small crustaceans and small fish from the surface.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
Passage migrant and winter visitor throughout the guide area, from Baja California and northern Mexico to Panama, on both coasts and inland; most numerous on migration in August and September. Outside the guide area the species breeds in Alaska and Canada and winters from the southern United States and the Caribbean to Argentina and Chile.
- Winter visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Wet pastures, rice fields and shrimp ponds with flocks of waders are the places to look for the species, often together with Greater Yellowlegs, which gives a good opportunity to compare size and bill.
Conservation status
Vulnerable. The world population has declined sharply over a few decades. Causes include the loss of staging and wintering sites, changes on the breeding grounds and hunting in the Caribbean and northern South America, where large numbers of waders are shot during autumn migration. In the guide area wet grassland and lagoons are being lost to drainage and the construction of shrimp farms.
Scientific name
Tringa flavipes | (Gmelin, 1789)
Gmelin described the species in 1789 as Scolopax flavipes; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Tringa was introduced in 1758 by Linnaeus. Tringa is the Neo-Latin name Aldrovandi gave to the green sandpiper, after Ancient Greek trungas, a thrush-sized, white-rumped, tail-bobbing wading bird mentioned by Aristotle. flavipes is Latin, from flavus 'yellow' and pes 'foot', after the yellow legs. The specimen the first description was based on came from New York.