Limosa laponica

The red-winged godwit is a shorebird that nests in northern Eurasia, from Scandinavia to eastern Siberia and Alaska. It winters in the south of the continent, making trans-equatorial migrations of several thousand kilometers, sometimes in one go. This 300g bird holds the record for the longest non-stop migration – over 13500 km in 11 days, over the sea, without ever landing to feed. In winter, red-headed godwits gather in their thousands along the French coast, staging or overwintering and feeding in estuaries and coastal mudflats. They can migrate by sea as far as the Iberian Peninsula and southern Africa. Existing telemetry data show that barges migrate along the coast or offshore, sometimes crossing the Bay of Biscay.

Shorebirds are captured on moonless nights using vertical nets stretched between their feeding sites on the mudflats. All shorebirds are fitted with GPS tags weighing between 3 and 10g, depending on the size of the species. These beacons transmit the birds’ geographical position and altitude live via the 4G network.

Migratory in France

Breeder in France

: Wintering in France