Banded stilt

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Banded stilt
Two brown and white birds wading in shallow water
Banded stilts,
Rottnest Island

Least Concern  (IUCN 3.1)[1]
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Charadriiformes
Family: Recurvirostridae
Genus: Cladorhynchus
G.R. Gray, 1840
Species:
C. leucocephalus
Binomial name
Cladorhynchus leucocephalus
(Vieillot, 1816)
Banded stilt natural range
Synonyms[2]

Recurvirostra leucocephala Vieillot
Recurvirostra orientalis Cuvier, 1816
Leptorhynchus pectoralis Du Bus, 1835
Himantopus palmatus Gould
Cladorhynchus australis Lawson
Cladorhynchus leucocephalus rottnesti Mathews
Xiphidiorhynchus pectoralis Ludwig Reichenbach, 1845

The banded stilt (Cladorhynchus leucocephalus) is a

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

National Parks and Wildlife Act 1972, however, this bird is considered to be Vulnerable. This is due to the predation of it by silver gulls, which are considered to be a serious threat. Black falcons and wedge-tailed eagles
are also predators, taking the banded stilt and its young.

Taxonomy

French ornithologist

Royal Academy of Belgium in 1835.[6]

English zoologist George Robert Gray placed the banded stilt in its own genus Cladorhynchus in 1840, noting that the name Leptorhynchus had been previously used.[7] The genus name is from the Ancient Greek klados "twig" and rhynchos "bill".

Himantopus an earlier offshoot.[14][15] A 2004 study combining genetics and morphology reinforced its position as sister to the avocet lineage.[16]

English naturalist

International Ornithological Committee (IOC).[18] Other common names include "Rottnest snipe" and "bishop snipe".[4][12] The Ngarrindjeri people of the Lower Murray River region in South Australia knew it as nilkani.[19]

Description

15 brown and white birds taking off from a shallow lake on an overcast day
Taking off, Port Fairy

The banded stilt is 45–53 cm (18–21 in) long and weighs 220–260 g (7.8–9.2 oz), with a wingspan of 55–68 cm (22–27 in). Adults in breeding plumage are predominantly white with black wings and a broad well-demarcated u-shaped chestnut band across the breast.[4] The central part of the base of the upper tail is tinted a pale grey-brown.[20] The slender bill is black,[21] relatively straight,[22] and twice as long as the head.[23] The irises are dark brown and the legs and feet are a dark red-pink.[21] The wings are long and slim and have eleven primary flight feathers, with the tenth being the longest.[23] In flight, the wings are mostly black when seen from above, but have a white trailing edge from the tips of the inner primaries.[4] From underneath, the wings are predominantly white with dark tips. White feathers on the head and neck have pale grey bases, which are normally hidden.[20] Non-breeding plumage is similar, but the chest band is less distinct and often diluted to an ashy brown or mottled with white.[4] The legs are a paler- or orange-pink.[21] There is no difference in plumage between the sexes,[4] nor has any geographic variation been recorded.[23]

Juvenile birds resemble adults but have a greyish forehead and lores, duller black wings, and lack the characteristic breast band.[4] Adult plumage is attained in the second year.[20] Their legs and feet are grey, becoming more blotched with pink until adulthood.[21] Nestling banded stilts are covered in white down.[21]

A distinctive bird, the banded stilt is hard to confuse with any other species; the

white-headed stilt lacks the breast band, and the red-necked avocet has a chestnut head and neck,[24] and a distinctly upcurved bill.[22]

Adults make a barking call that has been written as cow or chowk, sometimes with two syllables as chowk-uk or chuk-uk. Birds also chatter softly and tunefully while nesting.[25]

Distribution and habitat

Coorong, South Australia; some red-necked avocets
can be seen at far right.

The banded stilt is generally found in southern Australia. In Western Australia, it is found predominantly in the southwestern corner, though can be as far north as the

Wimmera.[24] In July 2010 Lake Torrens filled with water, resulting in the influx of around 150,000 banded stilts.[28] The Natimuk-Douglas Wetlands in western Victoria are an important nesting ground for the species, though lower numbers come here if there is flooding elsewhere in southeastern Australia.[29] In New South Wales, it is most commonly found in the Riverina and western parts of the state, and has reached southern Queensland and the Northern Territory, where it has been found at the sewage ponds at Alice Springs and Erldunda.[24] It has been recorded as a vagrant to Tasmania, with significant numbers recorded in 1981.[24]

The preferred habitats are large, shallow saline or hypersaline lakes, either inland or near the coast, including ephemeral salt lakes, salt works, lagoons, salt- or claypans and intertidal flats. The species is occasionally found in brackish or fresh water, including farm dams and sewage ponds.[24]

The banded stilt is highly nomadic, having adapted to the unpredictable climate of Australia's arid interior. Sudden rainfall results in the influx of water to and filling of dry inland salt lakes. The stilts respond by travelling to these areas and breeding, dispersing and returning to the coast once the lakes begin to dry up. How banded stilts on the coast become aware of inland rainfall is unknown. The distances travelled can be large; two birds have been tracked travelling from a drying Lake Eyre in South Australia to a newly filled lake system in Western Australia over 1,500 km (930 mi) away. One of these birds veered northwest over the Gibson Desert, travelling a minimum of 2,263 km (1,406 mi) in 55.9 hours.[30]

Behaviour

The banded stilt is

gregarious; birds are almost always encountered in groups, from small troops of tens of birds, to huge flocks numbering in the tens of thousands.[31]

Breeding

The breeding habits of the banded stilt were unknown until 1930, when a colony was discovered at Lake Grace.[32] Even then they remained poorly known until 2012, when researcher Reece Pedler and colleagues attached tracking devices to 21 birds to gain an insight into the species' movements. They discovered that the birds travel large distances inland and gather at the recently filled bodies of water.[30]

The majority of observed breeding events have occurred at inland salt lakes in South Australia and Western Australia immediately following freshwater inflows. An exception to this exists where some breeding was attempted at

The Coorong during a time in which salinity in the Lower Lakes was significantly elevated due to reduced environmental flows down the Murray River.[33] Breeding events are initiated by the filling of shallow inland lakes after rainfall and resultant explosion in numbers of food animals such as Parartemia brine shrimp. This can happen at any time of year.[34] Breeding sites are generally on low islands, of 1–1.5 m (3–5 ft) elevation, or spits on or alongside large lakes,[24] on clay or gravel and generally with sparse or no vegetation.[25] The nests themselves are scrapes in the soil, up to 15 cm (5.9 in) across and 3 cm (1 in) deep, with or without some dead vegetation as lining. Birds on stony soils generally gather vegetation instead of digging scrapes.[25]

Egg clutches number three to four (or rarely five) oval eggs, which vary from fawn to white marked with brown to black splotches. They can be 49–58 mm (1.9–2.3 in) long and 35–48 mm (1.4–1.9 in) wide.[25] Incubation takes 19 to 21 days,[20] with both sexes sharing duties, although the male takes over as sole incubator as the eggs hatch and immediately afterwards. This is thought to allow the females to lay and incubate a second brood if the water and food in the lake persists. Parent birds incubate for one to six days before swapping with the other parent. These intervals are much longer than other waders, and thought to be due to the remoteness of food—either the prey are blown to remote corners of the lakes by the wind or the lakes themselves have receded as they have dried. Parents almost always changeover incubating at night, generally within two hours of nightfall, presumably to avoid predators.[34] On hot days with temperatures over 40 °C (104 °F), incubating birds may leave briefly to wet their brood patches to presumably cool the eggs or young.[35] Birds on nests always face into the wind.[36]

The nestlings are born covered in white down—unlike any other waders—and mobile with open eyes (

nidifugous).[20] Adults lead the young birds to the water by the time they are two days old. Once in the water, they begin to feed on tiny crustaceans.[36]

Nest predators and hazards

Banded stilt colonies suffer greatly from predation by silver gulls (Chroicocephalus novaehollandiae), while wedge-tailed eagles (Aquila audax), white-bellied sea eagles (Haliaeetus leucogaster), spot-bellied eagle-owls (Bubo nipalensis) and black falcons (Falco subniger) also take stilts and young.[34] Premature drying of the lakes leads to parents abandoning their eggs or nestlings, resulting in the deaths of many thousands of young.[20]

Feeding

Parartemia zietziana (male + female), a prey item of the banded stilt

The banded stilt forages by walking or swimming in shallow water, pecking, probing or scything into the water or mud.[37] 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.[38]

Status and conservation

In 2016, the banded stilt was rated as

Department of Environment, Water and Natural Resources has developed a strategy for managing silver gull predation at chosen banded stilt breeding sites by applying site-specific culling measures. Breeding events observed at ephemeral lakes in Western Australia have proven to be more successful without the need for intervention due to their remoteness.[33]

References

  1. ^
    doi:10.2305/IUCN.UK.2016-3.RLTS.T22693709A93418535.en
    . Downloaded on 17 February 2018.
  2. ^ a b c Australian Biological Resources Study (1 March 2012). "Species Cladorhynchus leucocephalus (Vieillot, 1816)". Australian Faunal Directory. Canberra, Australian Capital Territory: Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts, Australian Government. Retrieved 21 June 2015.
  3. ^ Vieillot, Louis Pierre (1816). Nouveau Dictionnaire d'Histoire Naturelle, appliquée aux arts, à l'Agriculture, à l'Écomomie rurale et domestique, à la Médecine, etc. Par une société de naturalistes et d'agriculteurs (in French). Vol. 3. Paris, France: Chez Deterville. p. 103.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i Higgins 1993, p. 780.
  5. ^ Cuvier, Georges (1816). Le règne animal distribué d'après son organisation: pour servir de base à l'histoire naturelle des animaux et d'introduction à l'anatomie comparée. L'introduction, les mammifères et les oiseaux (in French). Vol. 1. Paris, France: Chez Deterville. p. 496.
  6. ^ Du Bus, V.B.L. (1835). "Académie Royale des Sciences et Belles-Lettres de Bruxelles. Séance du 15 décembre. Lectures. Ornithologie. L'Académie ordonne l'insertion dans son Bulletin de la notice suivante, contenant la Description d'un nouveau genre d'oiseau de l'ordre des eschassiers; notice qui lui a été presentée dans sa séance du 17 janvier dernier par M. le chevalier B. Du Bus, et sur la quelle un rapport a été lu à la séance du 7 mars. Genre Leptorhynque, – Leptorhynchus". Bulletin de l'Académie Royale de Bruxelles (in French). ii: 419–22.
  7. ^ Gray, George Robert (1840). A list of the genera of birds, with an indication of the typical species of each genus (2nd ed.). London, United Kingdom: John E. Taylor. p. 89. Cladorhynchus G.R. Gray, 1840.
  8. ^ Gistel, Johannes von Nepomuk Franz Xaver (1848). Naturgeschichte des Thierreichs : für höhere Schulen (in German). Stuttgart, Germany: Scheitlin & Krais. p. ix.
  9. ^ Gould, John (1865). Handbook to the birds of Australia. Vol. 2. London, United Kingdom: self-published. pp. 248–49.
  10. ISBN 978-1-4655-2450-8
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  11. ^ Reichenbach, H. G. Ludwig (1845). Die neuentdeckten Vögel Neuhollands, nach Vergleichung von Exemplaren beschrieben, und in ihrer zum Theil höchst merkwürdigen Lebens- und Fortpflanzungsgeschichte nach den neuesten Beobachtungen von Gould, Gilbert u. a. geschildert (in German). Dresden, Germany: Expedition der vollständigsten Naturgeschichte. p. 28.
  12. ^
    doi:10.1071/MU904129
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  13. ^ Mathews, Gregory M. (1913). The List of the Birds of Australia. London, United Kingdom: Witherby. pp. 61–62.
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  15. S2CID 53558095
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  16. PMID 15329156. Supplementary Material
  17. ^ Latham, John (1824). A General History of Birds. Vol. 10. Winchester, United Kingdom: Jacob and Johnson. p. 41.
  18. ^ Gill, Frank; Donsker, David, eds. (2019). "Grebes, flamingos, buttonquail, plovers, painted-snipes, jacanas, plains-wanderer, seedsnipes". World Bird List Version 9.2. International Ornithologists' Union. Retrieved 26 June 2019.
  19. ^ Clarke, P.A. (2003). "Twentieth Century Aboriginal Harvesting Practices in the Rural Landscape of the Lower Murray, South Australia". Records of the South Australian Museum. 36 (1): 83–107.
  20. ^ a b c d e f Higgins 1993, p. 787.
  21. ^ a b c d e Higgins 1993, p. 788.
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  23. ^ a b c Higgins 1993, p. 789.
  24. ^ a b c d e f g Higgins 1993, p. 781.
  25. ^ a b c d Higgins 1993, p. 786.
  26. ^ "Goldfields deluge attracts thousands of breeding banded stilts". PerthNow. News Ltd. 21 February 2014.
  27. doi:10.1071/MU933103
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  28. ^ Elder, John (11 July 2010). "Rain's blessing: stilt chicks take their first steps". Sydney Morning Herald.
  29. ^ Alcorn, Margaret; Alcorn, Richard (2000). "Seasonal migration of banded Stilt Cladorhynchus leucocephalus to the Natimuk Douglas salt-pans in the Western Victoria, Australia" (PDF). The Stilt. 36: 7–10. Archived from the original (PDF) on 12 March 2020. Retrieved 14 March 2017.
  30. ^
    PMID 25319819
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  31. ^ Higgins 1993, p. 784.
  32. ^ Brewin, Rebecca (23 October 2014). "Unlocking the mysterious movements of the banded stilt". ABC Goldfields. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved 4 March 2017.
  33. ^
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  34. ^
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  35. ^ Higgins 1993, pp. 786–87.
  36. ^ a b Higgins 1993, p. 785.
  37. ^ Higgins 1993, p. 783.
  38. ^ Higgins 1993, pp. 783–84.
  39. ^ Attorney General's Department (2013). "National Parks & Wildlife Act 1972". South Australian Legislation. Government of South Australia. Retrieved 23 January 2014.

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