Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A rust-brown and white sandpiper (Calidris alpina) that breeds in northern regions of North America and Eurasia.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The red-backed sandpiper, Tringa (Pelidna) alpina, widely dispersed and very abundant in the northern hemisphere, especially along sea-coasts, during the extensive migrations it performs between its arctic breeding-grounds and its temperate or tropical winter resorts.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Zoöl.) A species of sandpiper (
Tringa alpina ); -- called alsochurr ,dorbie ,grass bird , andred-backed sandpiper . It is found both in Europe and America.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A small
wading bird ,Calidris alpina , found along the coast and with a distinctive black belly patch in its breeding plumage. A type ofstint .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun small common sandpiper that breeds in northern or Arctic regions and winters in southern United States or Mediterranean regions
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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A shorebird called the dunlin is found by the thousands in the reserve.
Padilla Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, Washington 2008
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The Severn Estuary, where the celebrated naturalist Sir Peter Scott founded Slimbridge, the wildfowl refuge which became one of the world's most famous nature reserves, provides an 86,000-acre feeding ground for wild swans, geese and many thousands of wading birds, such as dunlin, turnstone, oystercatcher and ringed plover, from all over Europe.
Climate Ark Climate Change & Global Warming RSS Newsfeed 2009
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He comes to see the curlews and dunlin, the Brent geese and sparrowhawks, "no longer . . . as representatives of their species" but as individual beings, with homes, ages and "histories."
Life in the Woods Toby Lichtig 2011
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But it is the dunlin which are the most methodical.
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We could imagine the plaintive call of curlews just back from some salty estuary and the solitary piping of a dunlin, seemingly lost in all that bogland waste.
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I thought it dangerously late in the season for controlled heather burning, a real threat to ground nesting birds like red grouse and dunlin.
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Arctic breeding shorebirds such as the dunlin, whimbrel and western sandpiper converge on the rich feeding grounds along the coasts from Louisiana to Florida.
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Breeding origin and migration pattern of dunlin ( '' Calidris alpina '') revealed by mitochondrial DNA analysis.
Late-Quaternary changes in arctic terrestrial ecosystems, climate, and ultraviolet radiation levels 2009
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Species such as red knot ( '' Calidris canutus '') and ruddy turnstone ( '' Arenaria interpres '') are inferred to have had much larger populations and more extensive breeding areas during glacial stages, although others, such as dunlin ( '' C. alpina ''), exhibit evidence of range fragmentation during glacial stages leading to the evolution of distinct geographically restricted infraspecific taxa.
Late-Quaternary changes in arctic terrestrial ecosystems, climate, and ultraviolet radiation levels 2009
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Flotsam gives shelter to sandflies and other food for the small flocks of wading birds that kept wheeling in like a single organism, landing or taking off on the instant in perfect unison: sandlings, ringed plover, gadwall and dunlin.
Wildwood Roger Deakin 2009
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