The common redshank or simply redshank is a Eurasian wader in the large family Scolopacidae.
Region
Eurasia
Typical Environment
Breeds widely across temperate Europe and parts of central Asia, favoring wet grasslands, marshes, fens, and damp moorland. In winter it shifts mainly to coastal habitats, using estuaries, tidal mudflats, sandy shores, and saltmarshes. It also occurs on large inland wetlands during migration. Local populations in milder maritime climates can be resident, while continental and northern birds are more strongly migratory.
Altitude Range
0–2500 m
Climate Zone
Temperate
Ease of Keeping
Beginner friendly: 1/5
The common redshank is a widespread Eurasian wader easily recognized by its bright orange-red legs and loud piping alarm calls. In breeding areas it often acts as a sentinel, warning other birds of danger with ringing 'teu-teu-teu' notes. In flight, conspicuous white wing flashes and a white wedge up the back make it unmistakable. It breeds in wet meadows and marshes and winters mainly along coasts and estuaries.
Eggs, Museum Wiesbaden
Temperament
wary and alert
Flight Pattern
strong flier with rapid wingbeats and conspicuous white wing flashes
Social Behavior
Breeds in loose colonies or scattered pairs on open, wet ground, nesting on the ground among vegetation. Both parents typically incubate and guard the chicks. Outside the breeding season it is gregarious, forming flocks on estuaries and tidal flats. Often acts as a sentinel, giving loud alarms when predators approach.
Migratory Pattern
Partial migrant
Song Description
Voice is loud and ringing, with repeated 'teu-teu-teu' alarm notes and a piping, accelerating display call. Song flights over breeding grounds include trills and whistles that carry far across marshes.
Plumage
Mottled brown-grey upperparts with fine streaking and paler, lightly streaked underparts; more heavily spotted and barred in breeding plumage. In flight shows a bold white trailing edge to the wing and a white wedge up the back to the rump.
Diet
Feeds mainly on small invertebrates such as insects, worms, molluscs, and crustaceans, occasionally taking small fish or tadpoles. It probes soft mud and wet soil with its straight bill and also picks prey from the surface. Diet composition shifts seasonally, with more marine invertebrates in winter and terrestrial invertebrates on wet meadows in spring and summer.
Preferred Environment
Forages on muddy and sandy shores, estuarine flats, saltmarsh edges, and shallow pools; inland it uses flooded meadows, marsh margins, ditches, and rice fields. It prefers soft substrates where probing is easy and will exploit recently inundated grassland.
