Distribution

Breeding Range

Figure 1. Breeds throughout central Canada in band extending from Newfoundland, Labrador, and e. Nova Scotia, south of Hudson Bay to e.-central British Columbia. In e. Canada, breeds primarily between 48 and 58°N, with records from Anticosti I., Magdalen Is., Cape Breton I., and e.-central Nova Scotia (Erskine 1992a Erskine, A. J. (1992). Atlas of Breeding Birds of the Maritime Provinces. Nova Scotia Museum, Halifax, NS, Canada. Close , Gauthier and Aubry 1996b Gauthier, J., and Y. Aubry (1996). Les Oiseaux Nicheurs du Québec: Atlas des Oiseaux Nicheurs du Québec Meridional. Environnment Canada, Région du Québec: Association Québécoise des groupes d'ornithologues, Sociétié Québécoise de protection des oiseaux, Service Canadien de la Faune, Quebec, Canada. Close ). To west, breeding range becomes more northern (approximately 55–60°N at Saskatchewan-Alberta border), before moving south again in British Columbia (Campbell et al. 1990b Campbell, R. W., N. K. Dawe, I. McTaggart-Cowan, J. M. Cooper, G. W. Kaiser, and M. C. E. McNall (1990). The Birds of British Columbia. Volume I. Introduction and Loons through Waterfowl. Royal British Columbia Museum, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Close , Semenchuk 1992 Semenchuk, G. P. (1992). The Atlas of Breeding Birds of Alberta. Federation of Alberta Naturalists, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Close , Smith 1996b Smith, A. R. (1996). Atlas of Saskatchewan Birds. Saskatchewan Natural History Society Special Publications 22, Regina, SK, Canada. Close ). In Alaska, breeds from Etolin and Kupreanof Is. in southeast to Yukon Valley in north, Yukon Delta in west, and Alaska Peninsula and Kodiak I. in southwest (Gabrielson and Lincoln 1959 Gabrielson, I. N., and F. C. Lincoln (1959). The Birds of Alaska. Stackpole Company, Harrisburg, PA, USA. Close , B. McCaffery and R. MacIntosh pers. comm.). Occurs, and probably breeds, in intervening area and north to se. Yukon, despite lack of confirmed breeding records (Campbell et al. 1990b Campbell, R. W., N. K. Dawe, I. McTaggart-Cowan, J. M. Cooper, G. W. Kaiser, and M. C. E. McNall (1990). The Birds of British Columbia. Volume I. Introduction and Loons through Waterfowl. Royal British Columbia Museum, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Close , P. Sinclair pers. comm.). Combination of few observers through much of the potential range, inhospitable habitat, and difficulty of confirming breeding suggests that breeding range extends beyond that shown in Figure 1 . Single pairs breeding far outside of normal range reported for 69°N in Northwest Territories (1963; Martell et al. 1984 Martell, A. M., D. M. Dickinson and L. M. Casselman. (1984). Wildlife of the Mackenzie Delta Region. Edmonton, AB: Occas. Pap. no. 15. Boreal Inst. North. Stud., Univ. of Alberta. Close ) and ne. Oregon (1983–1986; Evanich 1992 Evanich, Jr., J. E. (1992). Birds of northeast Oregon, 2nd ed. Oregon Field Ornithol., Spec. Publ. 6. Close , Paulson 1993 Paulson, D. R. (1993). Shorebirds of the Pacific Northwest. University of Washington Press, Seattle, Washington, USA. Close ). Nonbreeding individuals regularly occur throughout wintering range during breeding season. Historical report of 2 nests in Argentina thought, on basis of distressed adults, to belong to Greater Yellowlegs (Holland 1892 Holland, A. H. (1892). Short notes on the birds of the Estancia Espartilla, Argentine Republic. Ibis 4:193-214. Close ); these observations were refuted by A. Wetmore (in Bent 1927 Bent, A. C. (1927). Life histories of North American shorebirds, Part 1. U.S. Nat. Mus. Bull. 142. Close ), and no subsequent studies support them.

Winter Range

Figure 1. Throughout central California, across s. Arizona and New Mexico (with northern extensions along Colorado River into Nevada, and along Rio Grande), through central Texas and southern half of states bordering Gulf of Mexico to Florida. Extends north along Atlantic Coast to New York and sporadically to e. Massachusetts (Veit and Petersen 1993 Veit, R. R., and W. R. Petersen (1993). The Birds of Massachusetts. Massachussetts Audubon Society, Lincoln, Massachusetts, USA. Close ); extends north along Pacific Coast to s. Oregon, with small numbers increasingly regular north to s. British Columbia (Buchanan 1988a Buchanan, J. B. (1988a). Migration and winter populations of Greater Yellowlegs, Tringa melanoleuca, in western Washington. Canadian Field-Naturalist 102:611-616. Close , Gilligan et al. 1994 Gilligan, J. D., M. Rogers, A. Smith, and A. Contreras (1994). Birds of Oregon: Status and Distribution. Cinclus Publications, McMinnville, Oregon, USA. Close ). Casual north of typical wintering range (Key 1991 Key, E. M. (1991). Greater Yellowlegs in central Oklahoma in winter. Bulletin of the Oklahoma Ornithological Society 24:31-32. Close , Paton et al. 1992 Paton, P. W. C., C. Kneedy and E. Sorensen. (1992). Chronology of shorebird and ibis use of selected marshes at Great Salt Lake. Utah Birds. 8:1-19. Close ). Winters throughout Mexico south to Isthmus of Tehuantepec and in coastal and near coastal (lowland) areas of Central America from the isthmus south to Panama (Ridgely and Gwynne 1989 Ridgely, R. S., and J. Gwynne (1989). A Guide to the Birds of Panama, with Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Honduras. 2nd Edition. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, USA. Close , Stiles and Skutch 1989 Stiles, F. G., and A. F. Skutch (1989). A Guide to the Birds of Costa Rica. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, USA. Close , Howell and Webb 1995 Howell, S. N. G., and S. Webb (1995). A Guide to the Birds of Mexico and Northern Central America. Oxford University Press, New York, New York, USA. Close ). Also winters in varying numbers throughout West Indies (Dod 1981 Dod, A. S. (1981). Guia de campo para las aves de la Republica Dominicana. Museo Nacional de Historia National, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Close , Raffaele 1989 Raffaele, H. A. (1989). A guide to the birds of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, USA. Close , Evans 1990a Evans, P. G. H. (1990). Birds of the Eastern Caribbean. Macmillan Press, Ltd., London, United Kingdom. Close ), and locally throughout South America south to Tierra del Fuego (Fjeldså and Krabbe 1990 Fjeldså, J., and N. Krabbe (1990). Birds of the High Andes. Apollo Books, Svendborg, Denmark. Close ). Rare during winter in Bermuda (Amos 1991 Amos, E. J. R. (1991). A Guide to the Birds of Bermuda. Corncrake, Warwick, Bermuda. Close ).

Extralimital Records

Rare migrant in Hawaiian Is. Casual in Europe; most records from British Isles are from between Jul and Nov, also some Mar–May (Alström and Colston 1991 Alström, P., and P. Colston (1991). A Field Guide to the Rare Birds of Britain and Europe. Harper Collins, London, United Kingdom. Close ). Other European records from: Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Iceland, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, and Sweden. Also reported in Russia (Glustchenko and Dorogoi 1986 Glustchenko, Yu N. and I. V. Dorogoi. (1986). The greater yellowlegs (Tringa melanoleuca)-new species of avifauna of the USSR. Ornitologiya 21:131-132. Close ), Japan (Brazil 1991 Brazil, M. (1991). The Birds of Japan. Christopher Helm, London, UK. Close ), Micron-esia (Marshall Is.; Baker 1951 Baker, R. H. (1951). The avifauna of Micronesia, its origin, evolution and distribution. Univ. Kansas Publ. Mus. Nat. Hist. 3:1-354. Close ), and South Africa (Hockey 1997a Hockey, P. A. R. (1997a). "Greater Yellowlegs Tringa melanoleuca." In The atlas of southern African birds. Vol. 1: Non-passerines., edited by J. A. Harrison, D. G. Allen, L. G. Underhill, M. Herremans, A. J. Tree, V. Parker and C. J. Brown, 769. Johannesburg, South Africa: BirdLife South Africa. Close ).

Historical breeding records include Maine, Iowa, Minnesota, and rarely n. Illinois (Knight 1908 Knight, O. W. (1908). The birds of Maine. C. H. Glass & Co., Bangor, Maine. Close ), suggesting that in the past, breeding range extended farther south than it does today.