Shanks
The shanks and tattlers are wading bird species in a number of genera characterised by a medium length bill and long, often brightly coloured legs. They chase visible prey, rather than probing like most waders.
These species are more associated with temperate regions for breeding than the rest of this largely arctic family. They are more often found in fresh water environments than many waders.
Unusually for waders, some of this group, notably Green Sandpiper, nest in trees, using the old nests of other birds, usually thrushes.
Systematics and evolution
The shanks' and tattlers' closest relatives are the phalaropes, as well as the turnstones and calidrids (van Tuinen et al. 2004). The present group is now considered to make up the large genus Tringa and two very small ones, similar to the situation found in many other shorebird lineages such as calidrids, snipes and woodcocks, or gulls. The Willet and the tattlers have turned out to be actually assignable to Tringa (Pereira & Baker, 2005); these genus changes were subsequently adopted by the American Ornithologists' Union (Banks et al., 2006).
The same study has indicated that some morphological characters such as details of the furcula and pelvis have evolved convergently and are no indicators of close relationship. Similarly, the leg/foot color wildly varies between close relatives, with the Spotted Redshank, the Greater Yellowlegs, and the Common Greenshank for example being more closely related among each other than to any other species in the group; the ancestral coloration of the legs and feet was fairly certainly drab buffish as in e.g. the Green Sandpiper. On the other hand, the molecular phylogeny reveals that the general habitus and size as well as the overall plumage pattern are good indicators of an evolutionary relationship in this gourp.
The Spotted Greenshank, a rare and endangered species, was not available for molecular analyses. It is fairly aberrant and was formerly placed in the monotypic (one single species) genus Pseudototanus. It appears closest overall to the semipalmata-flavipes and the stagnatilis-totanus-glareola groups, though it also has some similarities to the Greater Yellowlegs and Common Greenshank.
Family SCOLOPACIDAE
- Genus Xenus
- Terek Sandpiper, Xenus cinereus
- Genus Actitis
- Common Sandpiper, Actitis hypoleucos
- Spotted Sandpiper, Actitis macularia
- Genus Tringa
- Green Sandpiper, Tringa ochropus
- Solitary Sandpiper, Tringa solitaria
- Gray-tailed Tattler, Tringa brevipes - formerly Heteroscelus brevipes
- Wandering Tattler, Tringa incana - formerly Heteroscelus incanus
- Spotted Redshank, Tringa erythropus
- Greater Yellowlegs, Tringa melanoleuca
- Common Greenshank, Tringa nebularia
- Willet, Tringa semipalmata - formerly Catoptrophorus semipalmatus
- Lesser Yellowlegs, Tringa flavipes
- Spotted Greenshank, Tringa guttifer
- Marsh Sandpiper, Tringa stagnatilis
- Common Redshank, Tringa totanus
- Wood Sandpiper, Tringa glareola
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