Figure 128. Nearly a third of California’s Hudsonian Godwits have been found in the month of May, including this adult female photographed on 11 May 1980 in Lancaster, Los Angeles County (1980-082; Herbert Clarke).

 

Figure 129. Seasonal occurrence of Hudsonian and Bar-tailed Godwits in California. Both species are believed to undertake nonstop flights from Alaska to their wintering grounds in the South Pacific, and have been hypothesized to do so in mixed flocks, at least occasionally (Gill et al. 2005). Both pass through mainly in August and September, but the Bar-tailed has established a wider period of fall occurrence. That Hudsonians occur more frequently in spring is to be expected, given the routes taken (see the accounts for details).

 

Figure 222. As of 9 September 1997—the date of this photograph—the Bar-tailed (left) and Hudsonian (right) Godwits had been recorded only a combined 37 times in California, so one may ponder the long odds of capturing this image of these two first-fall birds at the Eel River Wildlife Area in Humboldt County (1998-029, 1997-148; Sean McAllister).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HUDSONIAN GODWIT Limosa haemastica (Linnaeus, 1758)

Accepted: 21 (66%)	Treated in Appendix H: yes
Not accepted: 11	CBRC review: all records
Not submitted/reviewed: 4	Large color image: see Figures

This godwit breeds in a disjunct, seemingly eccentric range that includes small portions of the western and southern coasts of Alaska and northwestern Canada and limited areas along the south shore of Hudson Bay. The main wintering grounds are in southern South America, including concentrations on the Atlantic coast of Tierra del Fuego and near Isla Chiloe on the southern Pacific coast of Chile (Elphick and Klima 2002). Fall migration—at least for birds breeding in the eastern portions of the range—is mostly via James Bay to the Canadian Maritimes and the Northeast before the birds head offshore and southward. As discussed in the following species account, the Bar-tailed Godwit’s Alaska-breeding subspecies, L. l. baueri, makes a trans-Pacific flight to wintering grounds in New Zealand and eastern Australia, and the available evidence suggests that the limited numbers of Hudsonians that winter in these areas travel with Bar-taileds (Gill et al. 2005; see also Higgins and Davies 1996). Most northbound birds in spring migrate through the Great Plains. As is typical of species that migrate such long distances, records of vagrants are widely scattered, including occurrences through the South Pacific, across the West, and in western Europe and South Africa.

California’s first Hudsonian Godwit was an adult present 9–10 August 1973 in Arcata, Humboldt County. The 20 CBRC-endorsed records that have followed consist of 14 fall migrants (8 August–18 October, all but one determined to be first-year birds) and six alternate-plumaged spring migrants (9–31 May; Figure 129); see also Appendix H. In addition, a badly decomposed first-fall bird was recovered on 11 November 1980 at the north end of the Salton Sea, Riverside County (Patten et al. 2003). This skeleton-supported record (LSUMZ 126414) has not been reviewed by the CBRC. This bird may well have arrived and succumbed in late September (excess salts at the shoreline of the Salton Sea function as an excellent preservative), but the date of death cannot be ascertained.