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Eurasian Oystercatcher
Haematopus ostralegus | Scholekster | Ostrero euroasiático
The Oystercatcher is the noisiest wader on the coast and at the same time a surprisingly successful breeder on grassland, arable land and even flat roofs. Its heavy orange-red bill is tuned by each individual to mussels or to worms.
Voice
A shrill, far-carrying klee-eep and, in excitement, an accelerating trilling series — the piping display, in which several birds bunch together with necks bent and bills pointing down. Heard all year, most intensely from March to June.
Recording: Pascal Christe — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Identification
Bulky, boldly pied bird with a long orange-red bill, pink legs and a red eye-ring around a red iris. In flight a broad white wing bar and white rump and tail base show. Winter birds have a white collar across the throat; juveniles show a duller, dark-tipped bill and greyish legs.
Confusion species
Little genuine confusion, but distant Shelducks on tidal flats are regularly claimed as Oystercatchers: they have a dark green head, a chestnut breast band and a duck's outline. Inland, a Magpie feeding on grassland causes the same mistake; only the Oystercatcher has the long orange bill and pink legs.
Habitat
Tidal flats, saltmarsh, shell banks and beaches; in the breeding season also grassland, arable fields, dykes, industrial estates and gravel roofs far inland. Outside the breeding season it concentrates on mussel beds and sandflats, roosting at high tide on saltmarsh, dykes or groynes.
Range and movements
Breeds around coasts from Iceland and Norway to Iberia, with a large Dutch population both on the Wadden Sea and in the farmed countryside. Northern birds winter along the Atlantic seaboard as far as Portugal and southern Spain, where the species is much scarcer than in north-west Europe.
- Resident
- Breeding (summer)
- Winter
- Passage
- Migration direction
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
Where and when to look
Two hours before high water on the Wadden Sea: birds are pushed off the flats and gather at high-tide roosts such as the Boschplaat or the Balgzand. For display behaviour and piping, try early mornings in April and May on grassland behind the sea wall.
Conservation status
Declining sharply in the Netherlands and elsewhere in north-west Europe, and Near Threatened globally. On the tidal flats the availability of mussels and cockles matters; in farmland it is early mowing, drainage, building on open land and predation of eggs and chicks.