On 20 May Tom Cooper found the rarest of the four ABA-area godwits, two ABA Code-3 Black-tailed Godwits (Limosa limosa), feeding on earthworms at the west end of the Catalina causeway in Catalina, Newfoundland (a 3-hour drive from St. John’s). The birds were still present on the 22nd of May.
These long distant migrants are known to make few stops on their way to breeding grounds in Iceland, Shetland Island, western and central Europe, Russia; a disjunct population breeds in Siberia, eastern Mongolia, and the Russian Far East. Depending on the subspecies, Black-tailed Godwits can be found wintering in Ireland, western France, Portugal, Spain, the Mediterranean region, sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, India, Indochina, Taiwan, the Philippines, New Guinea, Indonesia, and Australia.
On their breeding grounds they often nest in semi-colonial groups in wet grasslands, in areas with moderately high grasses, in lowlands, and in raised bogs and moorlands. The total population estimate is 140,000–270,000 pairs. Some authors consider Black-tailed Godwit to be conspecific with Hudsonian Godwit (Handbook of the Birds of the World, Volume 3).
Although the three subspecies can be difficult to separate because of the timing of molt and differnces in plumage by age, both L. l. islandica (wintering in western Europe) and L. l. limosa (winters in Africa) are the vagrants to the East Coast, whereas L. l. melanuroides is a vagrant to Alaska from Asia.
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