The tattlers are unique among the species of Tringa for having unpatterned, greyish wings and backs, and a scaly breast pattern extending more or less onto the belly in breeding plumage, in which both also have a rather prominent supercilium.

The wandering tattler 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 "ash-coloured snipe" that had been described in 1785 by the English ornithologist John Latham in his book A General Synopsis of Birds.

[5] and then in 2006 moved to the current genus Tringa based on a molecular phylogenetic study published the previous year.

[6][7] The genus 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.

In summer, the wandering tattler is found in far-eastern Russia, Alaska, portions of the California coast and northwestern Canada.