The turnstone
by john mcewen illustrated by carry akroyd
Saltings and eelgrass and mud dimpling under the moon – a place for curlews but not for me; a place for dunlin, godwit, sandpiper, turnstone but not for me. Norman Mccaig, from Estuary
An estuary is indeed the true domain of the turnstone ( Arenaria interpres).
‘Parts of the dark, weed-covered rocks were alive with feeding Turnstones,’ wrote artist Charles Tunnicliffe of Port Cwythan, Anglesey, on 2nd September 1947 ( Shorelands Summer Diary). ‘How they worked! And with what vigour they threw over piles of seaweed! Among them were several cock birds in their summer plumage of black, white, orange, and chestnut.’
The turnstone is well named, he added: ‘Stones, quite large stones, were treated in the same manner [as seaweed], and there was intermittent clatter as the birds hunted.’
If the object is too heavy, several birds can join in, to add the leverage provided by their sharp, stubby bills, with sometimes the deliberate shovelling of sand to provide a better foot purchase.
‘Although intelligent co-operation may be doubted, a definite procedure in dealing with large objects seems indicated,’ as H F Witherby ( The Handbook of British Birds) cautiously wrote in 1940.
Their diet can extend far beyond sandhopper crustaceans and so on. There is a chilling caption in Mark Cocker’s magnum opus Birds Britannica (2005): ‘The eccentricity of the turnstone’s diet embraces chopped garlic, Lifebuoy soap and human flesh.’ For grisly details of this 1966 Anglesey beach incident, see Colin Selway and Mike Kendall in British Birds.
Like humans, birds of all kinds, even charming songbirds, can turn cannibal. Turnstones would probably happily eat the corpse of one of their own. The bar of Lifebuoy soap was seen devoured by eight turnstones and three purple sandpipers by Frank King at
Dun Laoghaire, County Dublin. He wrote that ‘the waders fairly pushed and knocked each other over as they absolutely gobbled the soap’.
Cocker lists other food they have eaten, including a dead cat, dog food, cheese, potato peel, sea anemones and even the eggs of other turnstones.
Bird books written before the consumer society do not mention their omnivorous scavenging. My first experience of this behaviour was one August day in Whitstable. On the opposite quayside, a flock of birds, apparently starlings as they darted about, were transformed on closer inspection into marauding turnstones, the cocks still in the finery of their tortoiseshell breeding plumage.
They are one of the world’s global wanderers, albeit not leading players in the scintillating aerobatics of some foreshore waders.
Turnstones can be seen throughout the year in Britain, although a breeding pair has yet to be recorded. They are at their 40,000 maximum in winter, with most of them from Canada and Greenland.
Like many waders, the winter cock is a dim version of its summer breeding splendour, which is often on display among spring and autumn passage migrants.