The lesser 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.

[2] Gmelin based his description on the "yellow shanks" seen in the province of New York in autumn that had been described in 1785 by both the English ornithologist John Latham and the Welsh naturalist Thomas Pennant.

[3][4] The lesser 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.

[5][6] 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.

This species is a regular vagrant to western Europe; in Great Britain about five birds arrive each year, mostly between August and October,[11] with the occasional individual overwintering.

They mainly eat insects (such as flies, beetles, water boatmen, and mayflies),[12] small fish, crustaceans, aquatic worms, molluscs (such as snails), spiders, and seeds.