Broad-billed sandpiper
species of bird
The broad-billed sandpiper (Calidris falcinellus) is a small wader. The scientific specific name falcinellus is the diminutive from Latin falx, falcis, "a small sickle". It was formerly treated in its own monospecific genus Limicola, but this was found to be embedded within the wider genus Calidris, into which it was transferred in 2004.
Within the genus Calidris, the broad-billed sandpiper is most closely related to the sharp-tailed sandpiper (C. acuminata).
The two subspecies are:
C. f. falcinellus – breeds northern Scandinavia, northwest Russia; winters east Africa, Middle East, India
C. f. sibirica – breeds central and eastern Siberia; winters southeast Asia
Description
Broad-billed sandpipers are small waders, 16–18 cm long, slightly smaller than the dunlin, but larger than the little stint; it has a longer, straighter bill with the tip distinctly kinked down, and shorter legs than dunlin. The breeding adult has dark brown upperparts patterned with narrow, pale feather fringes, and white underparts with blackish markings on the breast. It has a pale crown stripe, and a distinctive double (split) supercilium. As its English name suggests, the bill is slightly broader than in most other Calidris species, but this "museum" name characteristic is rarely evident in the field.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Broad-billed sandpiper” as species of bird. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the science & nature register because the source frames it as species of bird. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q28114227. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2004.
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This entry incorporates text from “Broad-billed sandpiper” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.