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American Oystercatcher | Haematopus palliatus
Amerikaanse bonte scholekster | Ostrero americano
The American Oystercatcher is a large, heavily built coastal bird with blackish-brown and white plumage and a long, bright red bill. In the Caribbean it is a bird of rocky shores, beaches and small islets, where pairs hold their stretch of coast throughout the year. The birds are noisy and often draw attention by their calls before they are seen.
Voice
Calls frequently. The call is a loud, piercing kleep or wheek, often in series. In territorial disputes and courtship, pairs walk or fly side by side giving an accelerating, shrill piping that runs into a trill.
Recording: Jonas Nilsson — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
40–44 cm, stocky, with a thick neck and fairly short, sturdy pale pink legs. Head and neck are black, back and upperwing dark brown, breast and belly white. The bill is long, straight, laterally flattened and bright orange-red; the eye is yellow with an orange-red eye-ring. In flight a broad white wingbar and a white rump stand out. The sexes are alike. Juveniles have browner feather edges above, a dark tip to the duller bill and a dark eye.
Confusion species
There is no other oystercatcher in the region. Black Skimmer Rynchops niger is also black and white with a red-and-black bill, but has short legs, long narrow wings and a lower mandible longer than the upper. Willet Tringa semipalmata also shows a black-and-white wing pattern in flight, but is grey and has a dark bill.
Habitat
Rocky shores, limestone platforms by the sea, sandy beaches, tidal flats and especially small, uninhabited islets and cays. It feeds mainly on shellfish, such as mussels, oysters and other bivalves, which it prises or hammers open with its bill, as well as snails, crabs, sea urchins and worms. It breeds in scattered pairs; the nest is a scrape in sand, gravel or among rocks above the high-water line.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
Widespread but usually in small numbers. Fairly common in the Bahamas, the Turks and Caicos Islands, Puerto Rico with its offshore islets and the Virgin Islands. Scarce and local in Cuba and Hispaniola. In the Lesser Antilles a scattered breeder from Anguilla and Sint Maarten to Grenada, mainly on offshore islets. Also on Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao. Rare to vagrant in Jamaica, Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago. Beyond the region along the Atlantic coast of the United States and the Gulf of Mexico, through Mexico and Central America to the coasts of South America, in the east to Argentina and in the west to Chile.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Best found on rocky islets and quiet beaches at low tide, when the birds feed on exposed rocks and flats. From a boat they can often be heard from afar. On breeding islets pairs do not settle while disturbed; an islet with a calling pair is best viewed from the water.
Conservation status
Not globally threatened. In the Caribbean the populations are small and scattered, and sensitive to disturbance on beaches and islets by visitors, dogs and boats, and to predation by rats and other introduced mammals. Coastal development and sea-level rise reduce the breeding area.
Scientific name
Haematopus palliatus | Temminck, 1820
Temminck described the species in 1820 as Hamatopus palliatus; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Haematopus was introduced in 1758 by Linnaeus. Haematopus is Greek, from haima 'blood' and pous 'foot', after the red legs. palliatus is Latin for 'cloaked', from pallium 'cloak', after the dark brown back and wings. The specimen the first description was based on came from Venezuela (restricted later; originally South America).