Ruddy Turnstone (Arenaria interpres) & Red-necked Avocet (Recurvirostra novaehollandiae)

Newsgroups: alt.binaries.pictures.animals
Subject: Turnstone and Australian Avocet
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2000 05:35:26 GMT

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Turnstone (L) and Australian Avocet (R).jpg


From: "Oz Sailor"
Newsgroups: alt.binaries.pictures.animals
Subject: Re: Turnstone and Australian Avocet Attn SJR and Martin K Additional Information
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2000 22:57:30 GMT

TURNSTONE Arenaria interpres interpres (Linnacus, 1758)
The turnstones constitute a distinctive subfamily of waders, but authorities
are uncertain whether they should be grouped in the Scolopacidae or in the
Charadriidae. The common Turnstone of Europe - sometimes called Ruddy
Turnstone to distinguish it from the Black Turnstone - breeds in subarctic
and arctic regions and migrates to the Southern Hemisphere, so is virtually
cosmopolitan. Indeed, Otto Finsch predicted in 1870 that it would be found
in New Zealand, and sure enough in the following year Hutton reported that
there were specimens in both the Colonial Museum and the Canterbury Museum,
some of them obtained on the "Ninety Mile Beach", Canterbury. In April 1872
Hutton himself recorded a specimen in breeding plumage from the Wade River,
near Silverdale. Subsequently it has been reported from many localities,
including the Chathams, Aucklands, and Campbell Island. Lowe (1922)
considered that turnstones have skull characters, similar to those of
Scolopacidae, and called them "specialised Eroliines", but Oliver (1955)
commented that all Charadriidae could well be so termed. As to their
specialisation there can be no argument; they are "compact short-legged,
short-billed shore birds" that, using the bill and sometimes also pushing
with their bodies, overturn stones and other objects'on the beach in
searching for small invertebrates (Thomson 1964). According to Ringleben
(1972) a Turnstone weighing only 100 grams can overturn rocks weighing up to
180 grams. Doubtless this specialisation took a long time to acquire but
there is no fossil record to confirm that. The Ruddy Turnstone is circump
olar, and is among the most northerly of nesting birds, though its breeding
range extends into the Baltic. It is divisible into two subspecies, one of
which breeds from the Mackenzie River to western Baffin Land, the other from
north-west Alaska westward to Greenland. The Black Turnstone (A.
melanocephala Vigors) breeds.on the western and southern coasts of Alaska
and migrates down the west coast of North America. It thus exemplifies two
important generalisations about wader biogeography: first, it is zonally
separated from its eircurnpolar sister species; second, it breeds in a more
temperate zone and does not migrate as far south as its more arctic
relative. Turnstones have more narrowly defined habitat preferences than
some other waders. At favoured localities, however, they are quite abundant,
and seem to be in no way threatened or endangered. According to Sibson
(1946) they seem to arrive at Manukau Harbour and Miranda mostly in ones and
twos, a'nd commonly associate with Golden Plover (Plate 54). Most move south
after arrival in northern New Zealand, returning on their way north in March
and April, when the biggest flocks are recorded at Manukau Harbour (sixty to
eighty-five; last century Cheeseman encountered a flock of over a thousand
in a year' of exceptional abundance). Autumn flocks usually contain "a fair
sprinkling" of birds with the white heads of nuptial plumage but showing no
sexual excitement or sign of pairing. Instead, they feed together with
Golden Plover along the line of the tide, loosely strung out, and repair
together at full tide to a lava-stream foreshore where they rest in a fairly
compact flock and are remarkably hard to see. Sibson remarked that the
routine of these mixed autumn flocks is repeated year by year. The marked
autumn association of Golden Plover and Turnstone is surely part of the
"philopatry syndrome" in winter quarters, but we have yet to learn whether
the two species migrate together to the same breeding places in the Northern
Hemisphere.

AUSTRALIAN AVOCET Recurvirostra novaehollandiae Vicillot,

1816 According to Whittell (1954), Louis jean Pierre Vicillot (1748-1831)
became interested in natural history in the Caribbean island now known as
Santo Domingo, then held by France. Having been proscribed during the French
Revolution he took refuge in the United States, but returned to France and
took a minor post in the civil service, producing articles in Nouveau
Dictionnaire dhistoire Naturelle. In a second edition of this work (1816-19)
he described many new species of Australian birds, including the Australian
Avocet, based on material from "Nouvelle Hollande" that Gregory Mathews
believed to have come from Victoria. Buller listed the avocet from New
Zealand in his Essay on the Ornithology of New Zealand (1865). He reported
small flocks on the Ashburton River in the summer of 1859-60. Other
localities noted were mudflats near Whangarci, the south-west coast of
Wellington Province, tidal estuaries of the Kaiapoi and Rakaia rivers,
Christchurch, Ashley River, Methven, a lagoon near Timaru, Waimate,
jackson's Bay, Dunedin, Wakatipu, and Catlins. The species could not
establish itself, however, and after 1878 the only records are of stragglers
at Invercargill (1892) and Lake Ellesmere (1945). The avocets comprise four
closely related allopatric species of Recurvirostra. The Avocet of Europe
breeds locally in western Europe and more generally from the shores of the
Mediterranean eastwards across central Asia to Transbaikalia and northern
China. It also breeds in isolated parts of tropical and southern Africa.
Birds from the northern part of the breeding range migrate to Africa and
southern Asia. Thus, the establishment of southern African breeding
populations suggests how the Australian Avocet (nomadic, mainly in
continental Australia) may have been established as a Southern
Hemisphere'population. Its close resemblance to the American Avocet in the
rusty red colour of its head may betoken the ancestral plumage, from which
the black and white Palearctic Avocet has deviated late in the history of
the genus. Considering the success of the Pied Stilt in exploiting man-made
habitats in rural New Zealand, we can hardly blame our own species for the
avocet's failure to establish itself in this country. Probably the
Australian Avocet, adapted to a nomadic life in the saline lagoons of the
interior and the coastal estuaries of the south and west, in a low-rainfall
environment, found the high rainfall and regularly flooded watercourses of
New Zealand unsuited to its way of life.

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Ruddy Turnstone (Arenaria interpres) French: Tournepierre à collier German: Steinwälzer Spanish: Vuelvepiedras común Taxonomy: Tringa Interpres Linnaeus, 1758, Gotland, Sweden. Subspecies and Distribution A. i. interpres (Linnaeus, 1758) – Axel Heiberg I and Ellesmere I (N Canadian Arctic), Greenland, and N Eurasia to NW Alaska; winters on coasts of W Europe, Africa, S Asia, Australasia and Pacific islands, with some also on Pacific coast of America from California to at least Mexico. A. i. morinella (Linnaeus, 1766) – NE Alaska and most of Arctic Canada; winters from South Carolina and Gulf of Mexico S to SC Chile and N Argentina.

American avocet 31/40

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