page_title: Banded stilt
section_title: Feeding
hierarchical_section_title: Banded stilt / Behaviour / Feeding
caption_attribution_description: English: Parartemia zietziana (male + female)
context_page_description: The banded stilt is a nomadic wader of the stilt and avocet family, Recurvirostridae, native to Australia. It belongs to the monotypic genus Cladorhynchus. It gets its name from the red-brown breast band found on breeding adults, though this is mottled or entirely absent in non-breeding adults and juveniles. Its remaining plumage is pied and the eyes are dark brown. Nestling banded stilts have white down, unlike any other species of wader.
  Breeding is triggered by the filling of inland salt lakes by rainfall, creating large shallow lakes rich in tiny shrimp on which the birds feed. Banded stilts migrate to these lakes in large numbers and assemble in large breeding colonies. The female lays three to four brown- or black-splotched whitish eggs on a scrape. If conditions are favourable, a second brood might be laid, though if the lakes dry up prematurely the breeding colonies may be abandoned.
  The banded stilt is considered to be a species of least concern by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Under the South Australian National Parks and Wildlife Act 1972, however, this bird is considered to be Vulnerable.
context_section_description: The banded stilt forages by walking or swimming in shallow water, pecking, probing or scything into the water or mud. The bulk of its diet is made up of tiny crustaceans, including branchiopods, ostracods (seed shrimp), anostraca (fairy shrimp) such as Artemia salina and members of the genus Parartemia, both genera of notostraca (tadpole shrimp), and isopods such as the genera Deto and Haloniscus. They also eat molluscs, including both gastropods such as the land snail Salinator fragilis and members of the genus Coxiella, and bivalves of the genus Sphaericum, insects (such as bugs, beetles, flies and flying ants, which they glean from the water surface), and plants such as Ruppia. Small fish such as hardyheads (Craterocephalus spp.) have also been reportedly eaten.
caption: Parartemia zietziana (male + female), a prey item of the banded stilt
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