{"id":73924,"date":"2014-05-26T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-05-26T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/?guid=e6c119cf1dbf2363d95a5515ec6c5101"},"modified":"2026-07-16T07:59:51","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T06:59:51","slug":"the-american-oystercatcher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/the-american-oystercatcher\/","title":{"rendered":"The American Oystercatcher"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was in a marsh down the shore in southern New Jersey last week. I had stopped the car to look at some distant shorebirds in the mud. Then I noticed these two oystercatchers very close. I don’t know how I had missed them. These large shorebirds are boldly patterned with black heads, white bellies, brown backs, bright orange bills, and red-rimmed yellow eyes.<\/p>\n

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American oystercatchers, Haemetopus palliatus.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

They had attracted my attention by moving. One bird got up from where it had been sitting on the ground. The other bird quickly took its place. They had a nest right there! Oystercatchers nest on the ground in a shallow scrape lined with pebbles or shore debris. There were probably eggs there, though I did not see them.<\/p>\n

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The bird that had been relieved from nest duty walked a few steps away and then stretched and preened.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Oystercatchers use their unusual bills to forage for bivalves with a special technique. They walk stealthily, looking for partially opened shellfish, then jab with the long bill to sever the shell-closing muscles. They also sometimes pick up closed shellfish, take them to shore, and bang them open on rocks.<\/p>\n

They did not seem to mind me watching them, so I took a few quick photos from a distance and then left them to their parenting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was in a marsh down the shore in southern New Jersey last week. I had stopped the car to look at some distant shorebirds in the mud. Then I noticed these two oystercatchers very close. I don’t know how I had missed them. These large shorebirds are boldly patterned with black heads, white bellies, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":2195527,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/-WibdS6StRgQ\/U3lD1WB8OmI\/AAAAAAAABqs\/wjqkOJgUyY0\/s1600\/oystercatchers.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"The American Oystercatcher","footnotes":""},"categories":[6984,5],"tags":[106,2450],"class_list":["post-73924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogs","category-wildlife","tag-american-oystercatcher","tag-julie-feinstein"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73924\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2195527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}