Day 26: American Oystercatcher

This weekend, we're planning another trip to the eastern shore of Maryland, so hopefully I will have some more great material for you once we get back! More good news...we also decided to purchase a nice camera lens this week. I'm sure there will be a learning curve, but I'm really hoping that it will help improve the quality of my pics over time. I definitely need to buff up though, because the damn thing is heavy!

Today, I have a really cool bird for you, the American Oystercatcher. This is a very conspicuous looking bird; if you happen to see one, it's really hard to miss. Two races live in coastal salt marshes and sand beaches in North America, the eastern race (which we've seen in Georgia and Maryland) along the eastern shore of the U.S., and the western race along the Pacific coast of Mexico.

American Oystercatchers through the scope in Maryland

The American Oystercatcher is one of the few birds to specialize on bivalve mollusks living in saltwater, and they are completely restricted to marine habitats. They have a black and white body and a long, thick orange beak, which helps them pry open the mollusks.
 
Recently, we saw some in Maryland from a distance, and used the scope to get some blurry photos. When we lived in Georgia, we saw them a few times on Jekyll Island on the Georgia coast.

 American Oystercatchers in Georgia

Full disclosure, some of these photos we did not take this year, but several years ago in Georgia. As long as I see the bird this year and we've taken a photo of it at some point, I'm okay with using the best photos that we have. Because better photos = awesome.