Most shorebirds depend on coastal habitats for much of their life cycle. The quality and diversity of feeding areas during the wintering period directly condition their winter survival, subsequent migration, and breeding success. During their wintering in France, shorebirds use intertidal areas for feeding, both in daylight and at night, depending on the availability of mudflats during the tidal cycle. In this context, we studied whether the bar-tailed godwit (Limosa lapponica) shows contrasting foraging behaviors and distributions between day and night in response to differences in visual capacities, prey availability, potential predation risk, and human activities. We carried out a fine-scale GPS tracking of birds at one of their main wintering sites along the French Atlantic coast. We predicted smaller foraging home ranges at night because of limits for godwits to detect prey visually, suggesting more sediment probing and less movement. Godwits used the entire time window when they have access to intertidal areas, but they faithfully selected distinct diurnal and nocturnal feeding areas using a low number of patches. This variability in space use highlights differences in selection of habitats, such as seagrass beds selected by most of the tracked godwits by day and used much less at night. In addition, distinct feeding distributions of monitored birds revealed interindividual variability in habitat selection, even more by night, most likely to reduce intraspecific competition. We therefore urge greater consideration of the night distribution of birds, rarely evaluated in shorebird studies, to define areas and habitats of importance to future management and conservation measures.

大多数水鸟在整个生命周期中都依赖沿海栖息地。越冬时期的饲喂区域的质量和多样性直接决定着它们的冬季生存，随后的迁徙和育种成功。在法国的越冬期间，水鸟在白天和晚上都使用潮间带觅食，具体取决于潮汐周期内滩涂的可用性。在这种情况下，我们研究了长尾god（Limosa lapponica）显示出白天和黑夜之间不同的觅食行为和分布，这是由于视觉能力，猎物可用性，潜在的捕食风险和人类活动的差异引起的。我们在法国大西洋沿岸的主要越冬地点之一对鸟类进行了精细的GPS跟踪。我们预测夜间的觅食范围会更小，这是因为限制了目击者视觉上探测猎物，这意味着更多的沉积物探测和更少的移动。戈德威特人进入潮间带时使用了整个时间窗口，但是他们忠实地选择了少量的昼夜进食区和夜间进食区。空间使用的这种可变性突显了栖息地选择的差异，例如大多数被追踪的目击者在白天选择的海草床在晚上使用的少得多。此外，监测鸟类的不同进食分布揭示了栖息地选择的个体差异，甚至在夜间，这最有可能减少种内竞争。因此，我们敦促更多地考虑鸟类的夜间分布（在水鸟研究中很少评估），以定义对未来管理和保护措施具有重要意义的区域和栖息地。