Oystercatcher
Don’t be deceived by field guides, in the flesh, the Oystercatcher is a spectacular looking bird with fascinating behaviour, says Ian Parsons
Appreciate this bird for what it really is – spectacular and fascinating!
Someone once described the Oystercatcher to me as being the “plump ugly sister of an Avocet”. It is a statement that has lived long in my memory, probably because I think it is rather unfair, for I believe the Oystercatcher, with its conspicuous mix of black and white plumage topped off with a fabulous orange bill, to be one of our finest waders. If the Oystercatcher does have an image problem, it is not helped by its placement in bird guides. Now, taxonomically it may be correct, but if you end up sharing the page with the Avocet and that other long-legged stunner, the Black-winged Stilt, then I guess any comparisons are probably going to be unfavourable! They might not have the grace of the other two, and they may be ‘compact’, as my bird guide states, but I think they are beautiful in their own right, and they certainly have bags of character. They are not a bird that you are going to miss. These waders are common birds in Britain, with around 110,000 breeding pairs in the springtime. Come winter, the population is even larger, with around
340,000 Oystercatchers present, with
birds from Iceland and Scandinavia joining our resident birds to enjoy our milder climate. For many birders, including myself, waders can sometimes pose a bit of a challenge to identify, but the Oystercatcher doesn’t – it really stands out. During the spring and summer, an Oystercatcher on the ground is basically a bird of two halves, black on the top and white underneath, but like everything in life, this bird is not really black and white. The aforementioned orange bill and the red eye ring and even redder eye are striking, and along with the pink legs all combine to give this essentially black and white bird a colourful appearance. In the winter, the black plumage of the head is broken by a narrow white chinstrap, but otherwise the bird retains its distinctive coloration. In flight, the monochrome nature of the bird is accentuated, with a bold white wing bar contrasting against the black wings and the black-tipped tail offset with a white rump extending up the bird’s back to form a large ‘V’ shaped wedge. And if the plumage isn’t enough to catch your attention, then its voice certainly is! These are seriously noisy birds. In flight, they make a very distinctive and loud ‘kpeep’ call, making you aware of their presence even when they are still far off. On the ground, they also make loud, shrill piping calls, especially when in small groups running around on the exposed sand looking for food. Oystercatchers use their carrot-like bills to find their food below the surface, probing in the sand and mud for shellfish, especially cockles and mussels, worms and insects. Despite their name, they very rarely feed on oysters, although they are one of the few birds that are equipped to hack through the tough shell of an oyster if they so wish. What they
eat shapes the way the bird appears, or more specifically the way the bill appears. The bill of an Oystercatcher can either appear like a knife blade, with a broader tip, or much more spear-like, with a more pointed tip.
Migratory habit
Over the majority of its range, the Oystercatcher is, like most waders, highly migratory in its habits. In Britain, because they are present all year around, we often assume that they are more residents than migrants, but there is considerable movement of birds within the British Isles and beyond. For example, many of the birds breeding in Scotland and northern England will move to the estuaries like the Exe in south west England for the winter, while the birds wintering in the eastern half of Scotland and northern England may well have bred in Norway. Birds rung in Britain have been recovered in places as far afield as Russia, Morocco, Greenland and even on the remote Bear Island, a territory belonging to Norway, right up in the Arctic Circle. Oystercatchers like to travel, and the birds we see on our coastal patches in the spring and summer are likely to be different to the birds that we see in the winter. Oystercatchers don’t start to breed until they are four or even five years old, and they are long-lived birds with a typical lifespan being 12 years, although the oldest known bird (aged from ringing data) was 40 years old when it was last caught in 2010. It could even still be out there as you read this... Oystercatchers are no ugly sisters, they are brilliant birds and are well worth spending some time watching this month – you can even try and work out how they like to open their cockles!