This small wader in the plover family of birds is strongly migratory, they winter on coastal areas in east Africa, south Asia and Australasia and leave our shores in March or early April when they return to their summer breeding areas in southern Mongolia, inland eastern Siberia and the Russian Far East, they return to Australia in September.
Here they are found on extensive, freshly exposed areas of intertidal sandflats and mudflats in estuaries or beaches, the photo was taken at the Kinka Wetlands. Their diet is insects, crustaceans and annelid worms which are obtained by a run-and-pause technique rather than the steady probing of some other wader groups.
 The species does not breed in Australia and in non-breeding plumage both species appear similar. Their Asian breeding grounds are at high elevations above the tree line, in tundra on steppes and in flat, barren valleys and basins usually in boggy areas. The nest is a bare scrape in the ground in which three eggs are laid.
When you consider that these birds only weigh about the same as a large hen egg and the distance from Mongolia to here is around 9,000km you can begin to appreciate the immensity of their migration, and they do it twice a year.