{"id":4605,"date":"2015-01-29T08:45:02","date_gmt":"2015-01-29T16:45:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/larryeifert.com\/?p=4605"},"modified":"2024-02-22T08:20:49","modified_gmt":"2024-02-22T16:20:49","slug":"oystercatchers-published-january-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/2015\/01\/oystercatchers-published-january-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"Oystercatchers – Published January 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"2015-1-Oystercatchers\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Here is my 48 North story for January, 2015 – saw a pair of these guys along the beach in town, so, art copies life. And here’s the text that went with it. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

With orange eye, darker eye-ring and astonishing red-orange bill, black oystercatchers might be described as a bird in a Halloween outfit. And then there are those fleshy legs and feet. When we recently saw two on beach rocks, we both stopped and said the same thing: whowee!<\/em> There are around 400 oystercatchers in the Puget Sound area, and they tend to nest on grassy beaches without trees nearby (think predators overhead). Oystercatchers don\u2019t migrate, but in winter might form loose flocks. It\u2019s reported that all the San Juan oystercatchers get together in a sort of winter confab. Listen for their loud, piercing whistle, which to me implies wild rocky coasts like no other sound.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you notice that orange bill, it\u2019s not just long, but strangely-shaped like a sideways chisel. It begins as a triangle at the skull, but immediately slims down to a vertical pry bar all the way out to the blunt tip.  Why? Because these birds make their living prying shells off rocks. With one stab of that bill on a partially-open shell\u2019s adductor muscle, it\u2019s toast, and with the mussel open the oystercatcher can pull out the contents \u2013 dinner on the half-shell. This is often accomplished in the wave zone because wet mussels are already open a tad to filter water. I\u2019ve watched oystercatchers working limpet beds with a quick: pry off and stab, pry and stab \u2013 gulp, gulp. Pure proficiency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Larry Eifert paints and writes about wild places. His work is in many national parks across America \u2013 and at larryeifert.com.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Thanks for reading this week. Send this to someone who might appreciate what I’m painting and tell them to sign up. I’m trying to expand my list. An email <\/a>will work.<\/strong>
Larry Eifert<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here’s the blog on the web.<\/a>And here’s my Facebook fan page<\/a>. I post lots of other stuff there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Click <\/a>here to go to our main website – with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nancy’s web portfolio of beautiful photographs<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And Click<\/a> here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Here is my 48 North story for January, 2015 – saw a pair of these guys along the beach in town, so, art copies life. And here’s the text that went with it.  With orange eye, darker eye-ring and astonishing red-orange bill, black oystercatchers might be described as a bird in a Halloween outfit. And … Continue reading Oystercatchers – Published January 2015<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13455,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[7,112,125],"class_list":["post-4605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-published-story","tag-48-north-magazine","tag-stories-and-articles","tag-wildlife"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/2015-1-Oystercatchers-1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4605"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4605\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13456,"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4605\/revisions\/13456"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}