Family: Scolopacidae (Sandpipers, Snipes, Phalaropes)

Authority: (Linnaeus, 1758)

Red List Category

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Justification of Red List category
This species has an extremely large geographic range size (extent of occurrence >30 million km² in both the breeding and non-breeding seasons), and so does not approach Criterion B thresholds. It also has a very large estimated population size (1,800,000 to 2,650,000 individuals; Wetlands International 2023), and so does not approach Criteria C or D thresholds. Considering its population trend in North America over three generations (c. 22 years), the data presented in Smith et al. (2023) indicate a rapid decline of c. 70%. This is much steeper than the c. 23% decline reported by the Breeding Bird Survey (Ziolkowski et al. 2022), while numbers recorded by the Christmas Bird Count have remained broadly stable (Meehan et al. 2022). However, all of these North American sources relate to just two of the nine flyway populations globally, and together represent <5% of the global total (Wetlands International 2023). Elsewhere, the three large flyway populations that breed in Iceland, N Europe and W Siberia and winter in Africa are all considered to be stable (van Roomen et al. 2022; Wetlands International 2023). As these three populations together represent c. 90% of the global total, there is no evidence that the population is declining at a rate approaching Criterion A thresholds. Hence, the species continues to warrant listing as Least Concern.

Population size: 1800000-2650000 mature individuals

Population trend: decreasing

Extent of occurrence (breeding/resident): 31,100,000 km²

Country endemic: no

Attributes
USFWS - Bird of Conservation Concern
Realm - Afrotropical
Realm - Indomalayan
Realm - Nearctic
Realm - Neotropical
Realm - Oceanian
Realm - Palearctic
Realm - Antarctic
IUCN System - Freshwater
IUCN System - Terrestrial
IUCN System - Marine