Tringa melanoleuca
Silhouette: Andy Wilson · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~70% in a week ~90%
The greater yellowlegs (Tringa melanoleuca) is a large shorebird in the family Scolopacidae. It breeds in central Canada and southern Alaska and winters in southern North America, Central America, the West Indies and South America.
The greater yellowlegs was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. He placed it in the genus Scolopax and coined the binomial name Scolopax melanoleuca. Gmelin based his description on the "stone snipe" seen feeding in autumn in Chateau Bay, Labrador, that had been described in 1785 by both the English ornithologist John Latham and by the Welsh naturalist Thomas Pennant. The greater yellowlegs is now placed in the genus Tringa that was introduced in 1758 by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae. The name Tringa is the Neo-Latin word given to the green sandpiper by the Italian naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi in 1603 based on Ancient Greek trungas, a thrush-sized, white-rumped, tail-bobbing wading bird mentioned by Aristotle. The specific epithet melanoleuca combines the Ancient Greek melas meaning... Wikipedia →
| # | City | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Anchorage | 🇺🇸 United States | |
| 2 | Montevideo | 🇺🇾 Uruguay | |
| 3 | Mesa | 🇺🇸 United States | |
| 4 | San Francisco | 🇺🇸 United States | |
| 5 | Panama City | 🇵🇦 Panama | |
| 6 | Los Angeles | 🇺🇸 United States | |
| 7 | Cochabamba | 🇧🇴 Bolivia | |
| 8 | San Diego | 🇺🇸 United States | |
| 9 | Rosario | 🇦🇷 Argentina | |
| 10 | Calgary | 🇨🇦 Canada |
Possible
About 30% of wildlife watchers report a Greater Yellowlegs sighting in Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge on a given day, based on 3,813 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 40th most-seen of the 279 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 70%, and over a week to about 90%, if each day is a fresh chance.
February and March
In those months about 50% of wildlife watchers report a Greater Yellowlegs in Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge on a given day, against about 10% in June–July and September–October, the lowest months. Those are among Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge's driest months, with about 60 mm of rain a month against 210 mm in September.
Between 9 am and noon
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Greater Yellowlegs sightings with a recorded time, and about 9 in 10 of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is a daytime animal.
3rd of 72
Of the 72 parks where we can rate Greater Yellowlegs sightings, Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge ranks 3rd at about 30%. The best odds are in Katmai National Park (United States, about 60%) and El Vizcaíno Biosphere Reserve (Mexico, about 40%). All parks ranked.
Same genus: Tringa
The closest relatives of the Greater Yellowlegs that you can see in Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge (genus Tringa, Shanks, Tattlers, and Allies) are Willet (about 30%) and Lesser Yellowlegs (about 30%), with each one's daily chance of a sighting.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Greater Yellowlegs is recorded against all the birds logged in Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge (3,813 verified sightings from 2019 to 2026), calibrated against known sighting rates. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10% because citizen-science data supports honest approximations, not decimals, and months with records from fewer than five people show "—". How it works.
