Bar-tailed Godwit - Limosa lapponica
Pictures by Ray Tipper - More about Ray...
More about Ray Tipper
Ray Tipper began his birding on the North Kent Marshes at the age if eleven. He left his native Britain in 1973 spending most of the next 22 years in Hong Kong. As a trustee of WWF he was intimately involved with its renowned Mai Po Nature Reserve. It was in Hong Kong that Ray turned to bird photography, which quickly became his major interest. He gained associateship of the Royal Photographic Society in 1990, and his photographs appear in journals and books throughout the world. Ray guides specialist birdwatching and bird photography tours and since 1997 has led more than 100 tours in Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa and Madagascar. He now lives in the Algarve, where his intimate knowledge of its birds has been recognised by his appointment as Chairman of the Portuguese Rarities Committee.
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Tavira. Note the distinctly up-curved bill.
Godwit, Bar-tailed The world’s four species of godwit are split between Eurasia and the Americas. Hudsonian Godwit and Marbled Godwit are the American species and Bar-tailed and Black-tailed Godwit are the Eurasian species, although the breeding range of Bar-tailed Godwit spills over into Alaska. Two are medium-range migrants and two undertake impressively long migrations. Again, migration lengths are split between the regions with Hudsonian and Bar-tailed Godwits being the really long-distance migrants, the former breeding in Alaska and northern Canada and wintering in southern South America while Bar-tailed Godwit breeds in the tundra zone across the width of Eurasia and winters in Western Europe south to the Atlantic coast of South Africa, the Middle East, India, South-east Asia, Australia and New Zealand. Only recently has satellite tagging revealed that Bar-tailed Godwits perform the most remarkable migration of any animal on the planet. After breeding in Alaska, birds set off on a flight that is utterly beyond belief. They fly non-stop over water for seven days to reach New Zealand, a distance of some 7,000 miles. In the spring, flying north, they take it easy, stopping once on the Yellow Sea coast of China (distance approximately 6,250 miles) to feed and rest before continuing direct to their breeding grounds in Alaska.
Bar-tailed Godwits are winter visitors to the Algarve and can best be found on the tidal mudflats of the Canal de Tavira, Quinta de Marim, Ilha de Faro, Quinta do Lago and the Alvor Estuary. In winter plumage, care needs to be taken to separate them from Black-tailed Godwit. Bar-tailed are marginally the smaller with a slightly up-curved bill and light brown upperparts with noticeably darker feather centres creating a blotched appearance. Think of a small curlew with a more or less straight bill
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