A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1083 entries
turnstone
The turnstone is a stocky short-legged shorebird of rocky and weedy coasts that feeds by doing exactly what its name says: It puts its short, wedge-shaped bill under a stone, a shell, or a mat of weed and flips it over to take whatever is underneath. It works methodically along a tideline and will move objects considerably heavier than itself by levering with the bill and pushing with its legs.
Etymology
The English name is for the feeding and it is one of the more accurate bird names in the language.
Notes
Turnstones are opportunists to a degree that has embarrassed several field guides. Recorded diets include carrion, chips, soap, and, in one much-cited Scottish observation, a human corpse. They are among the most widely distributed shorebirds in the world, breeding around the whole Arctic and wintering on almost every coastline, and ringed individuals have been recorded returning to the same few hundred yards of shore for a decade.