Calidris is a genus of Arctic-breeding, strongly migratory wading birds in the family Scolopacidae. These birds form huge mixed flocks on coasts and estuaries in winter. Migratory shorebirds are shown to have decline in reproductive traits because of temporal changes of their breeding seasons(Weiser et al., 2018). They are the typical "sandpipers", small to medium-sized, long-winged and relatively short-billed.
Their bills have sensitive tips which contain numerous corpuscles of Herbst. This enables the birds to locate buried prey items, which they typically seek with restless running and probing.
Taxonomy
The genus Calidris was introduced in 1804 by the German naturalist Blasius Merrem with the red knot as the type species. The genus name is from Ancient Greek kalidris or skalidris, a term used by Aristotle for some grey-coloured waterside birds.
The genus contain 24 species:
Great knot, Calidris tenuirostris
Red knot, Calidris canutus
Surfbird, Calidris virgata
Ruff, Calidris pugnax
Broad-billed sandpiper, Calidris falcinellus
Sharp-tailed sandpiper, Calidris acuminata
Stilt sandpiper, Calidris himantopus
Curlew sandpiper, Calidris ferruginea
Temminck's stint, Calidris temminckii
Long-toed stint, Calidris subminuta
Spoon-billed sandpiper, Calidris pygmaea
Red-necked stint, Calidris ruficollis
Sanderling, Calidris alba
Dunlin, Calidris alpina
Rock sandpiper, Calidris ptilocnemis
Purple sandpiper, Calidris maritima
Baird's sandpiper, Calidris bairdii
Little stint, Calidris minuta
Least sandpiper, Calidris minutilla
White-rumped sandpiper, Calidris fuscicollis
Buff-breasted sandpiper, Calidris subruficollis
Pectoral sandpiper, Calidris melanotos
Semipalmated sandpiper, Calidris pusilla
Western sandpiper, Calidris mauri
References
Weiser, E. L., Brown, S. C., Lanctot, R. B., Gates, H. R., Abraham, K. F., Bentzen, R. L., Bêty, J., Boldenow, M. L., Brook, R. W., Donnelly, T. F., English, W. B., Flemming, S. A., Franks, S. E., Gilchrist, H. G., Giroux, M.-A., Johnson, A., Kennedy, L. V., Koloski, L., Kwon, E., & Lamarre, J.-F. (2018). Life‐history tradeoffs revealed by seasonal declines in reproductive traits of Arctic‐breeding shorebirds. Journal of Avian Biology., 49(2). https://doi.org/10.1111/jav.01531
