Habitat

Breeding Range

Low and subarctic wet sedge, mossy and grassy bogs near or above treeline near water, and muddy areas (Frisch 1982, Godfrey 1986, Campbell et al. 1990, Petersen et al. 1991); dry tussock-heath ridges above lakes (Yarbrough 1970, Sage 1974); damp tussock-heath valley bottoms; moist sedge and Sphagnum bogs around fresh and brackish ponds and ditches near intertidal cobble and mudflats (Cooper 1993); flat sandy coastal islands with low vegetated sand dunes and hummocky bogs around brackish lagoons (Miller 1977, 1983a, Cooper 1993); boggy fringe between coastal lakes and surrounding band of willow (Salix spp.) (JMC). Habitat features very similar across breeding range (Miller 1983a).

Spring And Fall Migration

Uses inland habitats more often than other small calidridines (Ashmole 1970, Spaans 1978), including muddy margins of lakes, ponds, sloughs, ditches, marshes, sewage ponds, river banks, and bogs (Brooks 1967, Godfrey 1986, Campbell et al. 1990); wet meadows, flooded agricultural fields (Colwell and Oring 1988, Hands et al. 1991); freshwater pools on beaches above deep lakes (Page and Bradstreet 1968, Bradstreet et al. 1977). Occurs up to 1,500 m elevation in Costa Rica (Styles and Skutch 1989).

On broad coastal mudflats, uses mainly dendritic drainage channels on inner edge of flats and open areas between clumps of marine vegetation (Couch 1966, Campbell et al. 1990). Tends to use smaller-scale habitats for feeding, where it may be most abundant shorebird at times (see Colwell and Landrum 1993), but is usually outnumbered on broad mudflats by Western and Semipalmated sandpipers and Dunlin (Calidris alpina). On rocky coastlines, small numbers use edges of tide pools (Campbell et al. 1990).

Roosts in salt marshes and wet pastures near foraging areas in coastal areas, often with other small sandpipers (Page et al. 1979, Hicklin 1987), on log booms and pilings in California (Gerstenberg 1979), and on barrier islands and vegetated sand dunes in coastal Alaska (Gill and Jorgenson 1979).

Winter Range

Intertidal muddy and shallow lagoons and brackish herbaceous swamps, muddy openings in mangrove forests, also inland ditches, freshwater swamps, flooded ricefields (Spaans 1978, 1979, Robert et al. 1989, Mugica-Valdes et al. 2001); broad mudflats backed by mangrove forest (Morrison et al. 1989); salt marsh (Salicornia virginica, Spartina foliosa) estuary with pools, channels, and mudflats (Grinnell and Hunt 1929, Page 1974); tidal sloughs, sand beach, mudflats, sewage lagoons, wet upland pastures, inland muddy margins of lakes, ponds, rivers, lagoons, marshes, and ditches (Gerstenberg 1979, Page et al. 1979, Thomas 1987, Long and Ralph 2001). In coastal Peru, brackish marshes and freshwater wetlands, rather than tidal mudflats used by Western and Semipalmated sandpipers (Ashmole 1970). Inland to 1,000 m elevation in wet, muddy marshes in Colombia (Hilty and Brown 1986).

Probes or pecks in damp mud during all seasons, also forages in drier terrestrial habitats during brood-rearing season.