Turnstone

The Turnstone is a fairly small and stocky wading bird. In all seasons, the plumage is dominated by a harlequin-like pattern of black and white. Breeding birds have reddish-brown upper parts with black markings. The head is mainly white with black streaks on the crown and a black pattern on the face. The breast is mainly black apart from a white patch on the sides. The rest of the underparts are white. In flight it reveals a white wingbar, white patch near the base of the wing and white lower back, rump and tail with dark bands on the uppertail coverts and near the tip of the tail. The female is slightly duller than the male and has a browner head with more streaking. The legs are fairly short and are bright orange. Non-breeding adults are duller than breeding birds and have dark grey-brown upperparts with black mottling and a dark head with little white. Juvenile birds have a pale brown head and pale fringes to the upperpart feathers creating a scaly impression.

The Turnstone breeds in northern latitudes, usually no more than a few miles from the sea, in western Alaska, Ellesmere Island, Greenland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Estonia and northern Russia. It formerly bred on the Baltic coast of Germany and has possibly bred in Scotland and the Faroe Islands. The typical breeding habitat is open tundra with water nearby.

The Turnstone is highly migratory and in Europe it winters in western regions from Iceland, Norway and Denmark southwards. Only small numbers are found on Mediterranean coasts. In the Americas, it winters on coastlines from Washington and Massachusetts southwards to the southern tip of south America although it is scarce in southern parts of Chile and Argentina and is only an unconfirmed vagrant in the Falkland Islands. In Africa, it is common all the way down to South Africa with good numbers on many offshore islands. In Asia, it is widespread in the south with birds wintering as far north as southern China and Japan. It occurs south to Tasmania and New Zealand and is present on many Pacific islands. Outside the breeding season, the Turnstone is found along coasts, particularly on rocky or stony shores. It is often found on man-made structures such as breakwaters and jetties. It may venture onto open grassy areas near the coast. Small numbers sometimes turn up on inland wetlands, especially during the spring and autumn migrations.

The Turnstone typically feeds on insects in the summer although their diet is extended to other invertebrates such as crustaceans, molluscs and worms in other seasons. It engages in a variety of behaviours to locate and capture prey. These behaviours can be placed into 6 general categories: routing (it manipulates piles of seaweed through flicking, bulldozing and pecking to expose prey hidden underneath), turning stones (as suggested by its name, it flicks stones with its bill to uncover hidden prey), digging (with small flicks of its bill, it creates holes in the sand or mud and then pecks at the exposed prey), probing (it inserts its bill more than a quarter-length into the ground to get at hidden prey), hammer–probing (it cracks open its prey's shell by using its bill as a hammer and then extracts the animal inside through pecking and probing and surface pecking (it uses short, shallow pecks less than a quarter bill-length to get at prey at or just below the ground surface). There is evidence that Turnstones vary between these feeding behaviours based on individual preference, sex and even social status with respect to other Turnstones.

Date: 3rd June 2015

Location: Melrakkaslétta, north east Iceland