The Oystercatchers

As you've been able to gather from my recent posts: even if we had some rain here lately, it has hardly been of biblical Deluge proportions. So when this morning I spotted some Eurasian Oystercatchers (Haematopus ostralegus) on the lawn below my balcony, I kind of wondered if they too have come to rely on human weather apps for information, rather than going by their natural instincts... (The Swedish name for them is strandskata, which would literally translate as "Beach Magpie" in English.) 

The lawns may have been given a decent watering over the past couple of days, but if they were hoping to find oysters, I think they must have been disappointed...

Just joking, of course. The river is only a few hundred meters away, and I have occasionally seen these birds around the neighbourhood before - even if not recently. They are rare guests compared to our usual everyday summer mix of seagulls, pigeons, magpies, crows and jackdaws. But yesterday morning, three or four visiting Oystercatchers seemed to have taken over the territory of this lawn from all the other kinds of big birds usually seen there, and had it all to themselves. And I found this interesting enough to go and fetch my Sony camera with some zoom possibilites, and snap a few photos...

Wikipedia tells me that despite the bird's name, oysters do not form a large part of the Oystercatcher's diet. It still lives up to its name, though, as few (if any) other wading birds are capable of opening oysters. It seems the shape of their bill can vary between individuals. Oystercatchers with broad bill tips open molluscs by prising them apart or hammering through the shell, whereas pointed-bill birds dig up worms.

So I guess what we see here is more a case of  "the early bird hoping the catch the worm"...