Bird Sightings: Oystercatcher Chick

thewesternisles.co.uk

Wildlife Forum NEW Hebrides bird sightings Bird pictures A - Z Bird pictures: thumbnails Bird ringing Seal and dolphin rescue Difference dolphin porpoise Seal pups Bottlenose dolphin A dolphin rescue BDMLR

Overview Flowering now A - Z wildflowers White wildflowers Yellow wildflowers Pink wildflowers Purple - blue flowers Orchid notes

Stornoway Arch Project August garden

Websites directory Featured sites: Hebridean Baskets Artist Wille Fulton Stornoway Arch Project

Bird Sightings : Hebrides : Oystercatcher Chick

Oystercatcher Chick

Haematopus ostalegus

Gaelic: Drilleachan, Gille-bride

Photograph © Terry Fountain
MOD Range - South Uist - Outer Hebrides (Western Isles)
4th June, 2006

Our Oystercatcher photographs:

oystercatcher summer

oystercatcher summer

oystercatcher flight

oystercatcher chick

Resident

An Oyster Catcher is 43cm, approximately the size of a Hooded Crow.

The distinctive long orange beak of an Oyster Catcher is one of a wader and is specialised for hammering and opening cockles and mussels, it also eats crustaceans and insects, and when inland, worms. (Oystercatchers can eat a cockle every 72 seconds!)

Very smart black and white shore bird with pink legs and feet.
The Oyster Catcher in flight shows a wide white wing-stripe, black tail and V-shaped white rump.

Adult in winter has a white chin-strap.

The Gaelic name Gille-bride means "servant of Saint Bride", and the plumage resembles a uniform.

Sandy and shingle beaches, dunes, saltmarshes, estauries and beside inland lochs throughout the Western Isles are the places where the Oyster Catcher can be found. We have over 1,200 breeding pairs out of a UK breeding population of 34,000 - 44,000.

The Oystercatcher nest is a bare scrape on the ground, and is sometimes in a dried up pool on the peats. The eggs are incubated by both parents.

One particular individual was found to be at least 35 years old and holds the longevity record for any wader in Britain.

Terry Fountain's web site:
http://www.hebridesphotographic.com

Other local bird photographs

back to page top

Home • Contact Webmaster • Advertising