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Australian Wildlife

  Bar-tailed Godwit (Limosa lapponica)





Bar-tailed Godwit | Limosa lapponica photo
Bar-tailed Godwit

Image by Tim Bowman, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service - License: Public Domain.    (view image details)

Bar-tailed Godwit | Limosa lapponica photo
Bar-tailed Godwit

Image by Tim Bowman, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service - License: Public Domain.    (view image details)

Bar-tailed Godwit | Limosa lapponica photo
Bar-tailed Godwit (Limosa lapponica),Teich Bird Reserve, France

Image by Pascal Aleixandre - Some rights reserved.    (view image details)







BAR-TAILED GODWIT FACTS

Description
Upper body parts dark-brown, underparts grey-white, feathers with light brown edges. Rump white and tail with dark grey-brown stripes. Bill long with two colours: base half pink and tip brown. Body up to 45 cm long.

Bar-tailed Godwits migrate to the northern hemisphere after summer to breed, returning in late August. They eat worms, molluscs and arthropods as well as some plant material, preferring to forage at the edge of water and in shallow water.

Author credit: Museum Victoria Sciences Staff / Museum Victoria

Habitat
Coastal mudflats, rare on inland lakes.

Food
Carnivore

Range
Eastern and north-western mainland Australia and Tasmania.

distribution map showing range of Limosa lapponica in Australia

Credits:
Map is from Atlas of Living Australia website at https://biocache.ala.org.au licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.


Species Description is from Museums Field Guide, Atlas of Living Australia at website at https://lists.ala.org.au Licensed under Creative Commons Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.




Classification
Class:Aves
Order:Charadriiformes
Family:Scolopacidae
Genus:Limosa
Species:lapponica
Common Name:Bar-tailed Godwit

Relatives in same Genus
  Hudsonian Godwit (L. haemastica)
  Black-tailed Godwit (L. limosa)