Black Oystercatcher
Haematopus bachmani

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Subphylum: Vertebrata
Class: Aves
Order: Charadriiformes
Family: Haematopodidae
Genus: Haematopus

Audio for Species

Call
Song

from Macaulay Library

Species Related Links

Additional Black Oystercatcher Pictures

Description

Length: 16.5-18.5 in (42-47 cm) Weight: 17.6-24.7 oz (500-700 g) Wing length: 9.76 in (24.79 cm)

A large, and noisy shorebird with a black head and body. A large red bill; thick pink legs and yellow eyes, with an orbital ring of orange-red skin. The juvenile has black in the bill tip and thier plumage has a little brown in it.

Habitat, Range, and Feeding

They are totally restriced to marine shorelines and prefer the more rocky shorelines. Although they nest in sandy and gravel beaches next to a rocky promontory.
They nest on the ground, and create a bowl by tossing pebbles, fine rock flakes or shell fragments into a scraping and they create a depression by rubbing their chest into the nest material. Sometimes using their feet to scrape in sand or sod. The nest diameter averages 8 inches (20.5 cm) with a depth of 1.1 inches (2.8 cm), it can contain hundreds of rock flakes and shell fragments. The clutch size is 2 to 3 eggs, that are cream buff to olive buff, variably bloched or scrawled with brownish black or purpling gray. The eggs are oval to pear shaped.

They eat intertidal marine invertebrates, particularly bivalves and other molluscs; also crabs, sea urchins, isopods, and barnacles. Rarely do they eat oysters.