Corpus Christi Caller Times Caller.com - Godwit can be distinguished from curlew by curve of bill

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Tuesday, October 26, 1999

Godwit can be distinguished from curlew by curve of bill

Marbled godwits are among the largest members of the sandpiper family. They winter here, arriving in August and remaining until April, when they depart for breeding grounds in the northern United States, Canada, and sometimes Alaska.
   Flocks of a hundred or more are sometimes seen, but usually individuals are scattered across muddy estuaries or flooded prairies. Large brown birds, godwits are sometimes mistaken for curlews. The godwit's flesh colored bill is tipped with black and turns up (is recurved) instead of down (decurved) as does that of the curlew. Sexes are similar in appearance but females are slightly larger. Wing linings are pinkish cinnamon and can be seen briefly when the bird extends wings upward as it alights.
   Although godwits breed on open, short grass prairies, in migration they seem to prefer seashores where they seek out shallow, sandy bays and mud flats.
   Their preferred diet consists of mollusks, crustaceans, and worms which they procure by probing and prying with their long bills in the soft mud of tidal flats. Godwits, like curlews, have special equipment built into their long bills, a series of tiny, hair-like appendages which the bird uses to work food up from the end of the bill to the mouth. In grasses and prairies, godwits eat grasshoppers and other insects, along with seeds and tubers.
   Godwits are strong fliers. They fly with head slightly drawn in, and legs thrust out straight behind. Large flocks of godwits were once common along the Atlantic Coast from New England south. Their numbers have declined steadily from the time when they were slaughtered by hunters.
   Their common name, godwit, may have originated in an Old English phrase, "god wicht" meaning "good creature," and possibly referring to the fact that they were considered delectable as edible game. Another possible source of the name is the sound made by these very vocal birds. I have never heard them make a peep but the literature attests to their noisiness on their breeding grounds. Various authors have described the sound they make as all the way from a loud, "eradica-radica-radica" to "your-crazy-crazy-crazy," and on to "gaw-wit', gawit, gawit." Oh, the problems incurred in translation!
   A large flock of marbled godwits was recently sighted at the Naval Air Station. Other places to look for them in this area are the shallow edges of the Oso on both sides of Ward Island (Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi.) Also, a flock of godwits historically winters along the shore of South Beach in Rockport Bay. This flock was reported in Kay McCracken's book on the late Connie Hagar. Hagar and a group of birders counted 250 marbled godwits there on New Year's Day, 1941.



Phyllis Yochem, a Corpus Christi resident, has studied birds of Texas since 1960.

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