"Black Oystercatchers need a new PR agent!"
He had her in his sights. Against the vivid blue sky, she stood immobile, her attitude one of watchful serenity, despite the waves that crashed relentlessly against the rocks at her feet. Unperturbed, she extended first one, then another of her pale limbs in a stately procession. Thus, she picked her way slowly among glistening expanses of tidepools filled with the oddest of creatures: tiny red octopuses, vari-colored sea stars, and chitons that looked like tiny armored cars. Frilly sculpins—small fish whose fins end in Edwardian-style cuff-ruffles, darted among flower-like sea anemones. Though tasty and varied, this was food akin to cocktail party fare: a delight to the palate but hardly filling.
Hopping up onto a higher rock, she spied dense beds of many hundreds of mussels, many shells agape, unsuspecting of danger. Swiftly she leaped into their midst, her sharp beak snipping the muscle that might snap them shut. Our relentless but stately stalker is a Black Oystercatcher, Haematopus bachmani, a shorebird both handsome and elusive to the untrained eye. Sometimes they can be heard first, emitting a high, rapid and repetitive call when they take flight.
A VISION IN BLACK: In California and other temperate West Coast shores, the Black Oystercatcher is a home-loving bird that stakes out and defends its coastal territory and does not undertake long migrations. (After all, our sanctuary and the California Current Ecosystem it protects is like a perpetual seafood smorgasbord.) Ironically, they don't prefer to eat oysters, when an abundance of the more prosaic mussels, limpets, barnacles, worms and chitons are available: a kind of reverse snobbery.
WELL-KEPT SECRET: Oystercatchers are cryptic birds that construct inconspicuous shallow scrapes or loose bowls rather than elaborate nests, often on coastal cliffs, behind rocks or driftwood. This is their home, year-round, and in spring the female will lay up to four eggs, from which fuzzy black chicks will emerge. Incubation takes from 26 to 32 days, and the parents - which form long term pair bonds - both nurture and protect them till fledging, around Day 40. The chicks will remain in the same area until the fall season.
The black oystercatcher is a large, long-lived shorebird about 15 inches high, with a thick, red-orange bill, and a startling bright yellow eye ringed with vermilion. Pale pink legs contrast with its all-black plumage. Juveniles are brown-black and less vivid bill. Oystercatchers are monogamous, returning to the same nesting territories to pair with the same mates each year.
SENSITIVE NATURES: This shorebird is considered a keystone species, and a particularly sensitive indicator of the overall health of the rocky intertidal community. Oystercatchers are highly vulnerable to natural and human disturbances. Major threats include egg predation, coastal development; human disturbance, including from vessel wakes, especially at high tides; toxic and feather-fowling oil spills; and climate change that may inundate low-lying nest sites.
Next time you visit the shore, use your ears and your eyes and see if an oystercatcher hoves into range of your binoculars. Watch as it probes its turf, and see how it interacts with other shore life. And quietly enjoy the variety and abundant wildlife of NOAA’s Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary, your ocean backyard.
