All species › Waders, gulls and terns › Gulls and terns › Black Skimmer
Black Skimmer | Rynchops niger
Amerikaanse schaarbek | Rayador Americano
The Black Skimmer is the largest of the three skimmers, a bird of the coasts and major rivers of North and South America. In southern Africa it is an exceptional vagrant that has strayed across the Atlantic.
Voice
A nasal, dog-like barking kaup or yap, often in series; flocks keep up a continual yapping.
Recording: Manuel Grosselet — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
40 to 50 cm, with very long, narrow wings. The upperparts, crown and hindneck are jet black, the forehead, face and underparts white; the secondaries have a broad white trailing edge. The bill is long and blade-like with a greatly elongated lower mandible; the basal half is bright red, the outer half black. The legs are red. Males are distinctly larger than females, with a longer bill. In winter adults show a white collar on the hindneck. Juveniles are scaled brown above, with a duller bill.
Confusion species
African Skimmer (Rynchops flavirostris) is smaller, blackish brown rather than jet black above, with a narrower white trailing edge to the wing, and has an orange-red bill with a yellow tip instead of a black outer half. Young African Skimmers with dark bills need extra care; check size, wing pattern and the colour of the bill base.
Habitat
In its own range coastal lagoons, estuaries, sandy beaches, salt marshes and large rivers. It roosts on sandbars and beaches and feeds by skimming over calm, shallow water, mainly at dusk and at night.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.
Range and movements
In the region solely as an exceptional vagrant; any record on the coast or at an estuary deserves careful documentation with photographs. It breeds along the coasts of North America from New England to Mexico, and in South America along coasts and large rivers south to Argentina and Chile.
How and when to look
Check tern flocks on estuarine sandbars on the coast for a black-and-white bird with a red-and-black bill. A skimmer on the coast, far from the inland rivers where the African Skimmer lives, always deserves a second look.
Conservation status
Not threatened, but declining locally in North America through disturbance of breeding beaches, coastal development and rising sea levels. Breeding colonies lie on open beaches and sandbars and are vulnerable to recreation, loose dogs and flooding.
Scientific name
Rynchops niger | Linnaeus, 1758
Linnaeus described the species in 1758 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. He introduced the genus Rynchops in that same work. Rynchops comes from the Greek rhunkhos, 'bill', and ōps, 'face' — a 'bill-face', for the striking bill with its much longer lower mandible. niger is Latin for 'black' — for the black upperparts. The specimen the first description was based on came from coast of South Carolina, USA.