Oystercatchers | Haematopodidae

Scholeksters | Ostreros

The bill is flattened sideways into a chisel and is used in two ways: some birds push it between the valves of a shell that is still gaping and cut through the closing muscle, others hammer the shell open against a stone or at its weaker side. Which of the two a bird uses is learned from its parents; the bill wears to that use and changes shape within weeks if the bird switches. On grassland and arable fields earthworms are pulled from the ground as well. Unlike almost all other shorebirds, the chicks do not find their own food: the parents carry it to them for months, until well after the young can fly, because opening shellfish takes too much practice. The nest is a scrape above the tideline, with two or three eggs. Neighbours and intruders are met with a loud, accelerating piping, the birds walking side by side along the shore with necks bent and bills pointed straight down.