The oystercatchers are a group of
wader
245px, A flock of Dunlins and Red knots">Red_knot.html" ;"title="Dunlins and Red knot">Dunlins and Red knots
Waders or shorebirds are birds of the order Charadriiformes commonly found wikt:wade#Etymology 1, wading along shorelines and mudflat ...
s forming the
family
Family (from la, familia) is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its members and of society. Idea ...
Haematopodidae, which has a single
genus
Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nom ...
, ''Haematopus''. They are found on coasts worldwide apart from the polar regions and some tropical regions of Africa and South East Asia. The exceptions to this are the
Eurasian oystercatcher
The Eurasian oystercatcher (''Haematopus ostralegus'') also known as the common pied oystercatcher, or palaearctic oystercatcher, or (in Europe) just oystercatcher, is a wader in the oystercatcher bird family Haematopodidae. It is the most widesp ...
, the
South Island oystercatcher, and the
Magellanic oystercatcher
The Magellanic oystercatcher (''Haematopus leucopodus'') is a species of wader in the family Haematopodidae. It is found in Argentina, Chile and the Falkland Islands in freshwater lake and sandy shore habitats.
Description
The Magellanic oyster ...
, which also breed inland, far inland in some cases. In the past there has been a great deal of confusion as to the species limits, with discrete populations of all black oystercatchers being afforded specific status but pied oystercatchers being considered one single species.
[Hockey, P (1996). "Family Haematopodidae (Oystercatchers)". In del Hoyo, J.; Elliot, A. & Sargatal, J. (editors). '' Handbook of the Birds of the World''. Volume 3: ''Hoatzin to Auks''. Lynx Edicions. .]
Taxonomy
The
genus
Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nom ...
''Haematopus'' was introduced in 1758 by the Swedish naturalist
Carl Linnaeus
Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his Nobility#Ennoblement, ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné#Blunt, Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalise ...
in 1758 in the
tenth edition of his ''
Systema Naturae'' to accommodate a single species, the
Eurasian oystercatcher
The Eurasian oystercatcher (''Haematopus ostralegus'') also known as the common pied oystercatcher, or palaearctic oystercatcher, or (in Europe) just oystercatcher, is a wader in the oystercatcher bird family Haematopodidae. It is the most widesp ...
''Haematopus ostralegus''. The genus name ''Haematopus'' comes from the
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic p ...
words ''haima''
αἳμα meaning blood, and ''pous''
πούς meaning foot, referring to the red legs of the Eurasian oystercatcher;
it had been in use since
Pierre Belon
Pierre Belon (1517–1564) was a French traveller, naturalist, writer and diplomat. Like many others of the Renaissance period, he studied and wrote on a range of topics including ichthyology, ornithology, botany, comparative anatomy, architectur ...
in 1555. The family Haematopodidae was introduced (as the subfamily Haematopodinae) by the French naturalist
Charles Bonaparte in 1838.
The
common name ''oystercatcher'' was coined by
Mark Catesby
Mark Catesby (24 March 1683 – 23 December 1749) was an English naturalist who studied the flora and fauna of the New World. Between 1729 and 1747 Catesby published his ''Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands'', the fi ...
in 1731 for the
North American species ''
H. palliatus'', which he described as eating
oyster
Oyster is the common name for a number of different families of salt-water bivalve molluscs that live in marine or brackish habitats. In some species, the valves are highly calcified, and many are somewhat irregular in shape. Many, but not ...
s.
Yarrell in 1843 established this as the preferred term, replacing the older name ''sea pie''
[
]
Description
The different species of oystercatcher show little variation in shape or appearance. They range from in length and in wingspan. The Eurasian oystercatcher
The Eurasian oystercatcher (''Haematopus ostralegus'') also known as the common pied oystercatcher, or palaearctic oystercatcher, or (in Europe) just oystercatcher, is a wader in the oystercatcher bird family Haematopodidae. It is the most widesp ...
is the lightest on average, at , while the sooty oystercatcher
The sooty oystercatcher (''Haematopus fuliginosus'') is a species of oystercatcher. It is a wading bird endemic to Australia and commonly found on its coastline. It prefers rocky coastlines, but will occasionally live in estuaries. All of its fea ...
is the heaviest, at . The plumage of all species is either all-black, or black (or dark brown) on top and white underneath. The variable oystercatcher
The variable oystercatcher (''Haematopus unicolor'') is a species of wader in the family Haematopodidae. It is endemic to New Zealand. The Maori name is torea-pango. They are also known as 'red bills'.
Description
"Variable" refers to the fron ...
is slightly exceptional in being either all-black or pied. They are large, obvious, and noisy plover
Plovers ( , ) are a widely distributed group of wading birds belonging to the subfamily Charadriinae.
Description
There are about 66 species in the subfamily, most of them called "plover" or "dotterel". The closely related lapwing subf ...
-like bird
Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweig ...
s, with massive long orange or red bills used for smashing or prying open molluscs. The bill shape varies between species, according to the diet. Those birds with blade-like bill tips pry open or smash mollusc shells, and those with pointed bill tips tend to probe for annelid worms. They show sexual dimorphism
Sexual dimorphism is the condition where the sexes of the same animal and/or plant species exhibit different morphological characteristics, particularly characteristics not directly involved in reproduction. The condition occurs in most an ...
, with females being longer-billed and heavier than males.
Feeding
The diet of oystercatchers varies with location. Species occurring inland feed upon earthworm
An earthworm is a terrestrial invertebrate that belongs to the phylum Annelida. They exhibit a tube-within-a-tube body plan; they are externally segmented with corresponding internal segmentation; and they usually have setae on all segments. T ...
s and insect larvae. The diet of coastal oystercatchers is more varied, although dependent upon coast type; on estuaries, bivalves, gastropods and polychaete
Polychaeta () is a paraphyletic class of generally marine annelid worms, commonly called bristle worms or polychaetes (). Each body segment has a pair of fleshy protrusions called parapodia that bear many bristles, called chaetae, which are made ...
worms are the most important part of the diet, whereas rocky shore oystercatchers prey upon limpets
Limpets are a group of aquatic snails that exhibit a conical shell shape (patelliform) and a strong, muscular foot. Limpets are members of the class Gastropoda, but are polyphyletic, meaning the various groups called "limpets" descended indep ...
, mussels, gastropods, and chitons. Other prey items include echinoderm
An echinoderm () is any member of the phylum Echinodermata (). The adults are recognisable by their (usually five-point) radial symmetry, and include starfish, brittle stars, sea urchins, sand dollars, and sea cucumbers, as well as the s ...
s, fish, and crabs.
Breeding
Nearly all species of oystercatcher are monogamous, although there are reports of polygamy in the Eurasian oystercatcher. They are territorial
A territory is an area of land, sea, or space, particularly belonging or connected to a country, person, or animal.
In international politics, a territory is usually either the total area from which a state may extract power resources or a ...
during the breeding season (with a few species defending territories year round). There is strong mate and site fidelity in the species that have been studied, with one record of a pair defending the same site for 20 years. A single nesting attempt is made per breeding season, which is timed over the summer months. The nests
A nest is a structure built for certain animals to hold eggs or young. Although nests are most closely associated with birds, members of all classes of vertebrates and some invertebrates construct nests. They may be composed of organic materi ...
of oystercatchers are simple affairs, scrapes in the ground which may be lined, and placed in a spot with good visibility. The eggs of oystercatchers are spotted and cryptic. Between one and four eggs are laid, with three being typical in the Northern Hemisphere and two in the south. Incubation is shared but not proportionally, females tend to take more incubation and males engage in more territory defence. Incubation varies by species, lasting between 24–39 days. Oystercatchers are also known to practice "egg dumping." Like the cuckoo, they sometimes lay their eggs in the nests of other species such as seagulls, abandoning them to be raised by those birds.
Conservation
The Canary Islands oystercatcher became extinct during the 20th century. The Chatham oystercatcher is endemic to the Chatham Islands
The Chatham Islands ( ) (Moriori: ''Rēkohu'', 'Misty Sun'; mi, Wharekauri) are an archipelago in the Pacific Ocean about east of New Zealand's South Island. They are administered as part of New Zealand. The archipelago consists of about te ...
of New Zealand but is listed as endangered by the IUCN, while both the African and Eurasian oystercatchers are considered near threatened. There has been conflict with commercial shellfish farmers, but studies have found that the impact of oystercatchers is much smaller than that of shore crabs.
Species
The genus contains twelve species.
Several fossil species are known, including ''Haematopus sulcatus'' (Brodkorb, 1955) from the Barstovian
The Barstovian North American Stage on the geologic timescale is the North American faunal stage according to the North American Land Mammal Ages chronology (NALMA), typically set from 16,300,000 to 13,600,000 years BP, a period of . It is usu ...
of Florida and Zanclean
The Zanclean is the lowest stage or earliest age on the geologic time scale of the Pliocene. It spans the time between 5.332 ± 0.005 Ma (million years ago) and 3.6 ± 0.005 Ma. It is preceded by the Messinian Age of the Miocene Epoch, and ...
of North Carolina, and which is evidently considered a synonym of the extant species ''Haematopus palliatus''.Haematopus palliatus Temminick 1820 (American oystercatcher) at FossilWorks
/ref>
References
External links
*ARKive
images and movies of the oystercatcher ''(Haematopus ostralegus)''
Oystercatcher videos
on the Internet Bird Collection
LIVE webcam at the seashore in Namsos, Norway 2013
{{Taxonbar, from=Q27515
.
Shorebirds
Haematopodidae
Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus
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