Home > African Black Oystercatcher

The African Black Oystercatcher, Haematopus moquini, is a large wader which is a resident breeder on the rocky coasts and islands of southern Africa. This oystercatcher has a population of less than 5,000 adults.

The African Black Oystercatcher is a large obvious and noisy plover-like birds, with completely black plumage, red legs and a strong broad red bill used for smashing or prising open molluscs such as mussels, or for finding earthworms. The sexes are similar, but juveniles are browner than adults.

The African Black Oystercatcher is unmistakable in flight with its all-dark plumage. The call is a distinctive loud piping, very similar to Common Pied OystercatcherCommon Pied Oystercatcher : Animalia : Chordata : Aves : Charadriiformes : Haematopodidae : Haematopus ostralegus Binomial name Haematopus ostralegus Linnaeus, 1758 The Common Pied Oystercatcher or in Europe just Oystercatcher is a wader in the Oystercatc. That migratoryLong-distance land bird migration Many species of land birds migrate very long distances, the most common pattern being for birds to breed in the temperate or arctic northern hemisphere and winter in warmer regions, often in the tropics or the southern he species can occur as a vagrant in southern Africa, but its black-and-white plumage makes confusion impossible.

The nest is a bare scrape on pebbles or shingle. 2-4 eggs are laid and incubated by both adults.

1 Reference

• Shorebirds by Hayman, Marchant and Prater BooksEnthsiast.com

2 External link

• BirdLife Species Factsheet