Little Stint
Calidris minuta
Despite weighing about as much as a single AA battery, the Little Stint can migrate over 7,000 kilometers twice a year.
- Scientific name
- Calidris minuta
- Taxonomy
- Animalia › Chordata › Aves › Charadriiformes › Scolopacidae › Calidris
- IUCN Red List status
- Least Concern
- Population trend
- decreasing
- Biome
- wetland
- Habitat
- Coastal mudflats, estuaries, saline lagoons, inland wetlands, and arctic tundra breeding grounds.
- Diet
- Small invertebrates, aquatic insects, larvae, tiny mollusks, and marine worms probed from the mud.
- Range
- Northern Europe, Siberia, Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Mediterranean Basin
- Size
- Length: 12-14 cm; Wingspan: 28-31 cm; Weight: 17-30 g
- Lifespan
- 4-7 years in the wild
- Active
- diurnal
- Threats
- Habitat loss and degradation of coastal wetlands, pollution, disturbance from human recreation, and climate change altering arctic nesting sites.
- Safe to approach?
- Harmless. Observe these energetic waders from a safe distance of at least 30 meters to avoid disrupting their crucial feeding and resting cycles, especially during their grueling migrations. If they stop foraging and look alert, back away slowly.
The little stint ( Calidris minuta ) (or Erolia minuta ), is a very small wader. It breeds in arctic Europe and Asia, and is a long-distance migrant, wintering south to Africa and south Asia. It occasionally is a vagrant to North America and to Australia. The genus name is from Ancient Greek kalidris or skalidris , a term used by Aristotle for some grey-coloured waterside birds. The specific minuta is Latin for "small.
Photo: Imran Shah, CC-BY-SA, via iNaturalist
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