Common Redshank

Fascinating facts about the Common Redshank

• When Carl Linnaeus first named the bird Scolopax totanus in 1758, he could not have imagined that today it shares its genus with twelve other shorebirds.
• Molecular clocks place the split between the common redshank and its closest relatives, the marsh and wood sandpipers, at about 5–6 million years ago – right around the Miocene-Pliocene boundary, a period that reshaped many bird lineages.
• Six distinct subspecies of the common redshank roam Eurasia, each breeding in a different corner – from Iceland and the Faroe Islands to southern Manchuria and the Tibetan plateau – highlighting how a single species can adapt to a wide range of climates.
• A single redshank can lay three to five eggs in wet meadow or salt-marsh nests.
• The species turned up on Palau in the mid-1970s, again in 2000, and a tagged individual was photographed at India's Manakudi Bird Sanctuary in April 2021.

At a glance

About the Common Redshank

The common redshank (Tringa totanus) cuts a striking figure along temperate Eurasian wetlands, its breeding plumage a marbled brown tapestry punctuated by subtle darker mottling, while winter cloaks it in a plainer grey-brown above and a clean whitish underside. Its most arresting features are the vivid red legs and the black-tipped red bill that flash against the muted backdrop, and the flash of white on its back and wings when it lifts into flight. This wader favors a mosaic of damp meadows, saltmarshes and other wetland edges, nesting in dense colonies where three to five speckled eggs are laid, and it moves with a wary, noisy confidence, its loud, piping call echoing across the reeds. Feeding on small invertebrates it probes the soft mud with a quick, probing jab, a behavior shared with its close relatives the marsh sandpiper and wood sandpiper, whose lineages diverged some 5–6 million years ago. A surprising trait for such a common bird is its occasional long-distance vagrancy – records from Palau in the mid-1970s, a tagged individual at Manakudi Bird Sanctuary in April 2021, and isolated sightings in the Caribbean, North America and South America illustrate its remarkable, if infrequent, wanderlust, hinting at hidden migratory pathways that still puzzle ornithologists.

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