STATUS: Common.
HABITAT: Found during spring and fall migration on beaches, mudflats, lakeshores, riverbanks, freshly plowed fields, shallow marshes, and peat banks. It breeds in dry Arctic tundra, sometimes quite far from water, and prefers lichen-grown gravelly tundra or areas of rubble and patches of stranded debris. Avoids grassy areas.
SPECIAL HABITAT REQUIREMENTS: Level, well-drained gravelly tundra.
NEST: Nests in unsheltered scrapes on level ground in gravelly or sandy soil, or in moss or lichens and above the high-water line in loose colonies.
FOOD: Prefers to feed in shallow streams or mudbars in tundra ponds, but also forages on tidal flats. Diet includes marine worms, mollusks, small crustaceans, larvae of midges and other insects, ants, beetles, grasshoppers, and spiders.
REFERENCES: Cottam and Hanson 1938, Palmer 1967, Sutton and Parmelee 1955, Terres 1980.