A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
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oystercatcher
The oystercatcher is a heavy black-and-white shorebird with a long straight orange-red bill, pink legs, and a loud piping call. It works mussel beds, cockle flats, and rocky shore, and it does not catch oysters. Individual birds specialize: Some hammer a shell to break it, some stab between the valves to cut the muscle, and the bill shape differs measurably depending on which technique a bird uses.
Etymology
The name is a mistake and a traceable one. The English bird was a sea pie for centuries, from its magpie coloring. Mark Catesby, working in the American colonies in the 1730s, described the American species and reported that it ate oysters, and the name he gave was later applied back across the Atlantic to the European bird, which had never been accused of it.
Notes
The technique a bird uses is learned from its parents rather than inherited, and hammerers and stabbers raise hammerers and stabbers. Bill tips wear differently under each method and regrow fast, so a bird that switches technique reshapes its own bill within weeks. Oystercatchers are long-lived, and some ringed birds have been recorded past forty.