[texbirds] American Oystercatchers foraging at night

  • From: MBB22222@xxxxxxx
  • To: texbirds@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sun, 24 Mar 2013 15:20:51 -0400 (EDT)

Interesting. BNA AMOY account (revised recently - May 22, 2012) note that:  
“Nocturnal foraging not observed, even during moonlit nights (Tuckwell and 
Nol  1997)”
 
I checked original source but no definition of what they considered ’night  
foraging was given. Method section only state this: “Five nightly trips, 
each 1  h in duration, were made each season, during clear nights, sometimes 
with a full  moon, to determine if nocturnal foraging was taking place at the 
Queen Sound  oyster bed.”  Then the results: “During 15 h of night 
observations we never  observed foraging, although tides were low, light levels 
were generally high  (from a full moon), and skies were clear.”
 
I just observed small group of six Oystercatchers (mix of adults and  
juveniles) after sundown. Up to at least 3 were kept foraging at the same time  
(could not keep track of all 6 when concentrating on photographing).  Last 
photos I took was about 10 minutes after sundown and I kept  observing  and 
taking video clips to about half hour after sundown. Stopped when get pretty  
dark; did I know that this was never recorded before I would kept taking 
video  recordings much longer as my video camera can record in the very low 
light. As I  said there is no clear description of what authors consider to be 
‘
night hours’  and, on the other hand. 15 hours of observation doe not 
sounds like a lot.   I saw that 2 out of six AMOY were banded but this 
doesn’t 
mean that 33%  oystercatcher in Texas population have color bands.
 
Here is an example of AMOY foraging (probing in intertidal flats) about 10  
minutes after sundown.
 
_http://www.pbase.com/mbb/image/149345095_ 
(http://www.pbase.com/mbb/image/149345095) 
 
This add something new to interesting AMOY behaviors I observed in the  
past.
 
Mark B Bartosik
Houston, Texas
_http://www.pbase.com/mbb/from_the_field_ 
(http://www.pbase.com/mbb/from_the_field) 
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