Gould wrote 'The Green Sandpiper... frequents the smallest water-holes as well as the margins of streams. [It] trips lightly over the oozy mud or along the edge of the water in search of insects and their larvae.'
The sandpiper sometimes nests in an old deserted nest of other birds. The adult is depicted with four eggs in a nest, 'which may well have been a pigeon's, in a branch of the Common Pine.'

DISTRIBUTION: Breeds northern Eurasia from north Scandinavia to Kolyma river, Mongolia and Manchuria. Winters Mediterranean area, south Asia and Philippines south to southern Africa and Australia. Has bred in Britain, mainly seen as passage visitor and in small numbers in winter