The species breeds in wet, freshwater grass or sedge meadows in the tundra (Takekawa and Warnock 2020). Occurs in a variety of wetland habitats including saline or brackish lagoons on passage and in the non-breeding season (Takekawa and Warnock 2020), but in Mexico noted to move to intertidal flats by the end of the period (Engilis 1998). 
Fully migratory, with most birds crossing North America along the central flyway but some passing along the Pacific flyway (Kwon and Kempenaers 2023). 
With little clear information on drivers of decline, and little evidence of obvious habitat loss, it is suspected but not clear that there is a reduction in at least the quality of the species' habitat. More research is required to understand if habitat area or extent is declining, and if it is the limiting factor for the species.

Breeds from the southwestern Taimyr Peninsula eastwards through Siberia, on Wrangel Island, and south to Kamchatka, Russia, western and northern Alaska, United States of America (USA), and northwestern Canada (Takekawa and Warnock 2020). This species winters further north than Short-billed Dowitcher and many other migratory shorebirds in the Americas, with the bulk of the population remaining within the United States and Mexico around the Gulf Coast and Mississippi River valley, as well as in the Central Valley in California and south to the Salton Sea and Gulf of Santa Clara. Birds occur south along the Pacific coast to Panama and along the Caribbean south to Nicaragua (Fink et al. 2023). Very few are considered to regularly winter in South America (Takekawa and Warnock 2020, Fink et al. 2023). The majority of birds fitted with satellite tags in the Alaskan breeding range followed a migration route through the central flyway to winter around the Gulf coast, with some using the Pacific flyway to winter in central California (Kwon and Kempenaers 2023). The Prairie Potholes region is especially important as a staging site during the pre-breeding migration (Skagen and Thompson 2013).

Conservation Actions In Place
Protected under the Migratory Birds Act (1927). This species' non-breeding population is part-covered by the Christmas Bird Count (Meehan et al. 2022); it is covered by the International Shorebird Survey during migration (Brown et al. 2001, Smith et al. 2023); and partly covered by the International Waterbird Census during the non-breeding season (Wetlands International 2023).

Conservation Actions Needed
More research is needed to establish drivers of population reductions. Habitat shifts due to climate change may already be affecting the species. Targeted monitoring in non-breeding and migration areas is needed to improve the precision of trend estimates. To support this and other shorebird species during their crucial  pre-breeding migrations region-wide wetland management plans are needed to ensure landscape level availability of a mosaic of wetland habitats (Albanese and Davies 2013).