South Island oystercatcher

The South Island oystercatcher, South Island pied oystercatcher, New Zealand oystercatcher, or tōrea (Haematopus finschi) is a bird in the family Haematopodidae. It lives in New Zealand but it also goes to Australia.

Appearance

This bird has black and white feathers, pink legs, and a long red bill, or beak.

Habitat

This bird spends most of its time in estuaries places where rivers mix with the ocean or by the coast.  When it is time for them to lay eggs, they go near rivers, in farmland, and sometimes grasslands.  They build nests on the ground out of gravel or earth.

Food

When this bird lives in estuaries or the coast, it eats mollusks, for example oysters and other animals with two shells.  It also eats crustaceans, earthworms, and insect larvae.  Scientists do not know what it eats when it flies inland to build nests.

Threats

There were about 40,000 birds alive in the early 1970s and 112,000 in the early 1990s.
References

Category:Birds of New Zealand
Category:Charadriiformes
Category:Birds of Australia