Black-winged stilt

The black-winged stilt or pied stilt (Himantopus himantopus) is a bird in the family Recurvirostridae. It lives in many places in the world: Australia, South America, Central America, Africa, southern Asia, some of North America, some of Europe, the Philippines, New Zealand, New Guinea, Indonesia, and the Solomon Islands.

Black-winged stilt
Conservation status
Least Concern (IUCN 3.1)
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Order:	Charadriiformes
Family:	Recurvirostridae
Genus:	Himantopus
Species:	H. leucocephalus
Binomial name
Himantopus leucocephalus

Appearance

This bird has black and white feathers. Its legs are long and orange. Its bill is straight and black. The irises of its eyes are red. They have gray feathers on their heads. The gray part gets bigger as the bird gets older.

Habitat and food

This bird lives in mudflats, marshes, and the shores of lakes and rivers.

This bird wades. It walks through shallow water on its long legs. It uses its beak to catch small animals with no spines off the top of the water. It can swim and put its head under the water to catch food, but it does not do this often. It eats insects, mollusks, and crustaceans. It can look for food in large flocks, groups of birds. The birds in the flock do not all have to be black-winged stilts. The black-winged stilt will look for food with banded stilts and red-necked avocets too.

Breeding

Many pairs of black-winged stilts build nests near each other. This is called a colony. But each pair will fight other birds if they come too close to their nest. The birds either dig a small hole in the ground or put pieces of plants on the ground to make the nest. Both the male and female stilt sit on the eggs.

Black-winged Stilt Media

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  Pair exhibiting courtship behaviour, Kinburn Peninsula, Ukraine

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  adults fightingKazinga Channel, Uganda

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  Black-winged stilt (Himantopus himantopus) Soliman, Tunisia