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African Oystercatcher (Haematopus moquini)

Posted on 07/06/2021 by Les Underhill

The African Oystercatcher Haematopus moquini is one of the iconic bird species of the coastline of the southwestern Africa. There is only one oystercatcher that breeds exclusively in Africa. So the “black” in African Black Oystercatcher is redundant, and is in the process of being dropped, in favour of the shorter name!

Identification

African Oystercatchers, especially the adults, are one of the easiest bird species to identify. It is the only species along the African coast with a black body and a bright red bill. They are noisy birds; listen to them here.

Identification of juvenile African Black Oystercatcher Haematopus moquini — Keir Lynch, Gansbaai, Western Cape. 27 February 2020. BirdPix 105606

Young African Oystercatchers are duller than adults. The most conspicuous differences are the bill colour, the lack of an eye ring, and the leg colour. The plumage is a dull brownish black, rather than plain black!

Habitat

African Oystercatchers are essentially confined to the shoreline. They occur on both rocky and sandy shores. They tend to be most abundant on shorelines which are sheltered, they are rarer on exposed shores, and absent from sections of coastlines where the ocean’s waves pound directly onto the bases of cliffs. On rocky shores, their daily cycles are driven by the tide. They feed in the intertidal zone at low tide, and loaf on rocks at high tide, often getting together in roosting groups. They feed at low tides during the night as well as during the day.

Habitat for African Black Oystercatcher sandyyshore — Typical habitat for oystercatchers on a sandy beach. The beach has a fairly flat profile, and there are lots of mussels buried in it for food. Oystercatchers avoid steeply sloping high-energy beaches where the sand is continously scoured, and mussels are unable to settle. This is near Sedgefield, Western Cape, South Africa. David Kennedy, 23 September 2008. BirdPix 3041

Distribution

This is the SABAP2 distribution map for the African Oystercatcher. It occurs only along the coastline. In reality, the width of the distribution is even narrower than that shown on the map. In most places the strip of coastline in which you can find oystercatchers is about 50 m wide, from the lowest level of spring low tide, to a few metres above the spring high tide level. It is steadily expanding its breeding range northeastwards across KwaZulu-Natal. Vagrants have been recorded along the Angolan coast in the west, and in Mozambique in the east.

Behaviour

African Oystercatchers are strongly territorial, and once they settle in a territory, they remain on it and defend it for the rest of the lives, up to 15 to 20 years. They are noisy birds, with lots of social interactions with their partners and their neighbours. Pairs do lots of ritualized ceremonies, as shown in the photo below.

Pair of African Black Oystercatchers displaying — Len de Beer, Gansbaai, Western Cape, 18 July 2005. BirdPix 8112

Breeding

The breeding season of African Oystercatchers coincides with the midsummer holiday period; most eggs are laid from November to February in South Africa, and about two months later in Namibia. The nests are just above the spring high tide level; the incubation period is about 30 days, so nests need to be high enough up the shore to avoid being washed away by two sets of spring tides. The nests cannot be made too far up the shore, because this would place them in the vegetation, and make the incubating bird vulnerable to predation by, for example, a mongoose.

Whether they are breeding on a rocky shore or a sandy beach, oystercatchers don’t go to lot of trouble building nests. They have a minimalist approach to nest architecture! It is best described as a scrape, and is sometimes lined with some seashells. Here are three examples.

Nest of for African Black Oystercatcher on rocky shore

The next nest, on a sandy beach, is in the dead centre of the photo, and contains two eggs:

Nest of African Black Oystercatcher on sandy shore

The nest has been placed in a bend in the kelp. There are small round stones scattered around, which look quite egg-like.

This “nest” illustrates the minimalist approach:

African Black Oystercatcher nest with three eggs

The parents take turns incubating the eggs. It is hard to believe how difficult it is to spot a black bird with a red dagger for a bill sitting on its eggs on a white sandy beach:

Haematopus moquini on its nest on sandy shore

… if you need a clue, the bird is near the right edge of the photo, and it is looking at the camera! Here it is close up:

close up of African Black Oystercatcher on its nest on sandy shore

Ultimately, two spring tides later, the eggs hatch, and a fluffball emerges. The second egg is pipped and the chick will emerge soon. The fluffball has dried off since it hatched. It’s a bit of packaging miracle how it could have squashed into an egg an hour or two earlier:

The chicks leave the nest within about 24 hours. They move up and down the shore with their parents, in rhythm with the tides. They are fed small pieces of mussels and limpets.

The African Oystercatcher chick is near the top right of this photo

If a chick is in any way threatened while it is out in the open, it quickly finds a place to hide. This might be under a boulder or in a crevice in the rocks. In this case, the chick is simply squatting out in the open in the kelp, relying on its camouflage outfit to keep it concealed!

African Oystercatchers: Fledgling on left and adult on right. Robben Island, 19 April 2023. BirdPix record 251640

The juveniles start to fly at about 40 days, when they reach 2/3rds of the adult mass. This juvenile was newly fledged, and was still learning to fly. The bill clearly has some growing to do before it reaches adult size! Fledglings hang around with their parents until they are about 100 days old. It is only then that their bills are strong to be able to prize shellfish off the rocks and feed themselves. It is a big commitment being an oystercatcher parent.The adult in the photo above has a ring, and was probably ringed on this same territory on Robben Island in 2021 or 2022. African Oystercatchers, once they acquired a breeding territory, live a long time.

African Oystercatcher gallery

A pair of African Oystercatchers on Robben Island had newly hatched chicks on 11 November 2025:

They are not really chicks, they are fluffballs!

One of the parents did the “rodent run”, illustrated in the next four photos. The adult flutters around, pretending to be injured, and attempts to draw you away from the chicks.

This performance deserved an Oscar!

Occasionally, and this happens in most bird species, the colouring goes completely haywire, and you have no idea what you are looking at. Like the bird on the left, gosh!

Leucistic African Black Oystercatcher — Mark Booysen, Swartkops River estuary, Eastern Cape. 10 July 2013. Curated in both BirdPix 10392 and Birds with Odd Plumage BOP 180

Luckily, in this case, the aberrant bird is standing alongside an African Oystercatcher, so it is pretty obvious what it actually is. This bird did not produce normal amounts of melanin, the pigment that turns feathers black. So it ended up a motley brown. This condition is called leucism. (There is a section of the Virtual Museum that curates photographic records of Birds with Odd Plumage, BOP.)

If you are amazingly lucky you might encounter a flock of oystercatchers and have one that sticks out like a sore thumb. It clearly an oystercatcher, slightly smaller than the African Oystercatchers, but is white as well as black. It is clearly not a plumage aberration, it is too neatly patterned for that!

There is a Eurasian Oystercatcher in this flock — Les Underhill, Walvis Bay. 3 March 2007. BirdPix 1415

If you are in southern Africa, awesomely well done, you have found a vagrant, the Eurasian Oystercatcher Haematopus ostralegus. (If you are in Africa north of the equator, this is the only oystercatcher you will encounter.)

Further resources: A selection of papers and a video:

Conservation Status of Oystercatchers Around the World (2014). Assessment of the Conservation Status of African Black Oystercatcher. Chapter in book published by the International Wader Study Group
Video in the BDI YouTube channel (2021). African Oystercatchers on Robben Island
Species text in the first bird atlas (1997). African Black Oystercatcher Haematopus moquini
The journal Wader Study has an Open Access paper published in 2021: African Oystercatchers on Robben Island, South Africa: The 2019/2020 breeding season in its two decadal context
The journal Biodiversity Observations has an Open Access paper describing how the range of the African Oystercatcher has changed between the first and second bird atlas projects (SABAP1 and SABAP2)
In 2025, Biodiversity Observations reported a record of an African Oystercatcher near Carnarvon in the Karoo

More common names: Swarttobie (Afrikaans), Huîtrier de Moquin (French), Kapausternfischer (German), Ostraceiro-preto (Portuguese), Ostrero Negro Africano (Spanish)

A list of bird species in this format is available here.

Recommended citation format: Underhill LG 2021. African Oystercatcher Haematopus moquini. Biodiversity and Development Institute. Available online at https://thebdi.org/2021/06/07/african-black-oystercatcher-haematopus-moquini/

Archive/Biodiversity/BirdPix/Citizen Science/News/Virtual Museum

Impacts of Rhodes on Biodiversity 3 : Common Starling

Posted on 02/06/2021 by Les Underhill

This is the third and final blog in this series on the impacts of Rhodes on biodiversity. The first blog talked about the Eastern Grey Squirrel. The second covered four of the five bird species that Cecil John Rhodes introduced so that his residence in Cape Town would have familiar English birds in the garden; of these four only the Common Chaffinch didn’t quickly go extinct. The fifth bird species he introduced was his big success story. Rhodes’s vision of building a railway line northwards from Cape Town through Africa to Cairo failed; but his starling has made a promising start in covering the distance!

Rhodes’s starlings were captured on his behalf by another rogue of the era, Colonel Richard J. Meinertzhagen (1878-1967). He was a soldier; in any squadron of soldiers he would have been regarded as the nastiest. When he wasn’t shooting people he was shooting birds for museum collections. But he couldn’t get enough birds of his own, so he stole skins of birds from museums, and then put his own labels on them, with completely different places and dates. Here’s a link to a paper in the journal Ibis called “Richard Meinertzhagen—a case of fraud examined“. It goes so far as to say: “Given the readiness with which Meinertzhagen falsified data on stolen specimens, one must question the authenticity of data on specimens he collected himself.” That is not what you expect to read in a scientific journal! There are endless stories of the harm this man has done to ornithology. The most horrid is the story of the Forest Owlet Athene blewetti in India. For decades this tiny owl was known to science from only six specimens, collected in India between 1873 and 1883. In 1961 (when he was in his eighties), Meinertzhagen all of a sudden claimed that he had collected a specimen in 1914 (when he would have been 36 years old) from another locality in India. He deposited this specimen in the British Museum. For decades after the 1960s, expeditions visited this part of India which apparently had the most recent sighting of the Foret Owlet. They searched for the owlet, without success, and it was declared extinct. Then Dr Pamela Rasmussen did some forensic ornithology. She discovered that one of the six earlier specimens was missing from the museum collection. It had been stolen by Meinertzhagen and he had put a new label on it, with falsified date and place. His diary demonstrated that he had not been in that part of India on that date! She went in search of the owlet in the area where the other specimens came from; on 25 November 1997, she rediscovered it in a degraded woodland. For a fuller version of this sleazy story, see this article in the Pune Mirror. Anyhow, that is a long detour to describe the kind of company that Cecil John Rhodes associated himself with!

Meinertzhagen supplied Rhodes with 18 Common Starlings. He says (and can we trust him?) that he caught them in Britain in winter, which means that they are likely to have been migrants from continental Europe. There is a massive influx of starlings into Britain in late autumn, especially from northwestern Europe where it gets bitterly cold in winter. Britain is only cold.

The precise year that Rhodes set the starlings free at Groote Schuur is not certain, but it is most likely to have been 1897. They took off, both literally and figuratively. But it was not until 1954 that an attempt was made to put on record how it spread. There is a paper in Ostrich, unfortunately not open access, by Jack Winterbottom and Richard Liversidge, called “The European Starling in the south west Cape” (Ostrich 25: 89-96). Their detective work, to trace its spread, consisted of interviewing lots of people. They neatly summarized their findings in this awesome map:

The spread of the Common Starling in the Western Cape South Africa, one of the impacts of Rhodes on biodiversity — From Winterbottom & Liversidge (1954) The European Starling in the south west Cape. Ostrich 25: 89-96

It was in the suburbs of Cape Town around Groote Schuur within a few years. It colonized Robben Island by 1907. It spread to the far side of the Cape Flats by 1910. The big mountains proved a barrier for a few years, but it got to the far side, to towns like Worcester and Elgin in the 1920s. Along the south coast, the map traces its eastwards spread, taking about three decades to cover the 450 km from Elgin to Plettenberg Bay. It moved northwards along the West Coast more slowly, reaching Clanwillian in 1950. This map effectively shows the distribution of the Common Starling in 1954.

The next snapshot of the distribution of the starling was made by the Southern African Bird Atlas Project (SABAP1), which collected records mainly from the second half of the 1980s. Here is the map:

SABAP1 distribution map for Common Starling — The Atlas of Southern African Birds, Volume 2, page 453

It had expanded far to the east, just into KwaZulu-Natal, and not quite as far to the north, reaching Namibia at the town of Oranjemund. Between the time that fieldwork ended and the atlas was published, it had snuck into Lesotho, and by the early 1990s was getting common in Maseru. The SABAP1 species text for the “European Starling” (as it was then known) is here.

The first bird atlas was followed up the the second bird atlas (SABAP2). This project started in July 2007, and the map below produced in June 2021, so it is a 14-year time exposure!

SABAP2 distribution map for Common Starling in South Africa. This enormous distribution reveals one of the impacts of Rhodes on biodiversity — Distribution of the Common Starling, SABAP2 data, July 2007 to June 2021. The interpretation of this map is described here

Common Starlings have continued their march northeastwards. In the gridcells shaded yellow, they are far less frequently encountered than in those shaded dark blue. But they have clearly established themselves across KwaZulu-Natal, the Free State and Gauteng. There is still a long way to go to reach Cairo.

The Virtual Museum has 501 photographic record of Common Starlings. Below is a collection of thumb-nails of some of them! In the future, say in 50 years time, the photographs which are going to be the most valuable are going to be the ones in which the bird is quite small, and which show the habitat in which it occurred!

Collage of Common Starling photos from the BirdPix Virtual Museum

You’ll find lots more interesting information about the Common Starling here.

Impacts of Rhodes on biodiversity 1 and 2

The first and second blogs in this series deal with two other species which Rhodes introduced: the Eastern Grey Squirrel, which has not expanded far, and the Common Chaffinch, which has neither gone extinct nor taken off.

Recommended citation format: Underhill LG 2021. Impacts of Rhodes on Biodiversity 3 : Common Starling. Biodiversity and Development Institute. Available online at http://thebdi.org/2021/06/02/impacts-of-rhodes-on-biodiversity-3-common-starling/

BDInsight/Citizen Science/News

BDInsight – May 2021

Posted on 31/05/2021 by Megan Loftie-Eaton

Winter is around the corner here on the southern tip of Africa, in some areas winter has already arrived with a cold bang! We have some great BDI news to warm you up….

The online guide to the Neuroptera of southern Africa

We have been working on something very exciting over the past little while, the online guide to the Neuroptera (lacewings and antlions) of southern Africa. The insect order Neuroptera, or net-winged insects, includes the lacewings, mantidflies, antlions, and their relatives. The order consists of some 6,000 described species worldwide!

Neuroptera, and within this group especially the family Chrysopidae, are of interest to a large group of entomologists because of their role as predators of pest arthropods (aphids and spidermites) on agricultural plants.

*Chrysemosa jeanneli* – Family Chrysopidae – LacewingMAP Record by Johan Heyns

Citizen Scientist Hours

We had some incredible talks during the month of May. If you missed out on any of the Citizen Scientist Hours (CSH), don’t despair, you can catch up on our YouTube Channel.

One of the many excellent talks during our CSH events was by Katy Williams. Katy is a researcher and the Conservation Director of the Cape Leopard Trust in South Africa. Katy will talked about the Leopards in the Western Cape of South Africa. Despite extensive habitat loss, direct persecution, and reduction in prey numbers, leopards have managed to persist in the greater Western Cape region, and now fill the role of apex predator in this ecosystem. Watch the talk to learn more about these survivors, the challenges they face, and the Cape Leopard Trust’s work to ensure their future…..

Virtual Museum

10,442 records have already been added to species distribution maps in May. Some of the records report the first occurrence of a species in a grid cell. Many of the records “refresh” old records, providing evidence that the species still persists in the grid cell. Asking which class of records is more important is like asking the question: “Is the left wing of the plane more important than the right wing?” We need both types. We only have one day in May left to push the RED dot (see the graph below) for May up to new and dizzying heights!!

Thank you for your support of the Virtual Museum!

In other news…..

The Cape kelp forests have been named one of the Seven Wonders of the World! Described as a shallow underwater jungle more than twice as wide as the Grand Canyon — and a home to millions of creatures, this wonderland beneath the waves lies approximately 17 km south of Cape Town.

Myrmeleontidae (Antlions)

Posted on 20/05/2021 by admin

This is the description of the Family Myrmeleontidae in the online guide to the Neuroptera (lacewings and antlions) of southern Africa

Myrmeleontidae is the largest lacewing family. There are currently 50 recognised genera and at least 180 described species in South Africa. Additionally there are many species that await description.

Fifty genera are known from South Africa: Annulares; Bankisus; Banyutus; Brachyplectron; Capophanes; Centroclisis; Crambomorphus; Creoleon; Cueta; Cymothales; Distoleon; Exaetoleon; Furgella; Fadrina; Golafrus; Hagenomyia; Jaya; Lachlathetes; Macroleon; Macronemurus; Maula; Myrmeleon; Nadus; Nannoleon; Nemoleon; Nesoleon; Neuroleon; Obus; Palparellus; Palpares; Palparidius; Pamares; Pamexis; Syngenes; Tomatares; Tricholeon.

Identification

Medium to very large sized (Wingspan 26-160 mm)

All have prominent but fairly short antennae. The compound eyes are fairly large and widely spaced.

Adults have two pairs of wings that are roughly equal in size. Their abdomens are long and slender and consist of ten segments.

Adult antlions superficially resemble dragonflies and damselflies. Antlions can be differentiated by having prominent antennae, smaller, widely spaced compound eyes and very intricately veined wings. Antlions also rest with their wings closed down the length of the body.

One of the Antlions Palpares immensus — *Palpares immensus* – This magnificent species is one of the largest in the order. The wingspan can attain 160mm.
Near Carnarvon, Northern Cape
Photo by Ryan Tippett

Centroclisis maligna in typical resting position of antlions — *Centroclisis maligna* in typical antlion resting position, with wings folded along the length of the body.
Near Carnarvon, Northern Cape
Photo by Ryan Tippett

Food & Feeding

Adults and larvae are predatory and feed on other insects.

Adults mostly capture smaller flying insects in flight using their bristly legs. Prey is then taken to a perch before being consumed.

The larvae are all ambush hunters. They conceal themselves below the sand surface and grab unsuspecting prey that passes close by. The larvae of some genera are pit-fall trap builders (see Larvae below).

antlion feeding — *Creoleon mortifer* feeding on a Blowfly (Calliphoridae)
Near Carnarvon, Northern Cape
Photo by Ryan Tippett

Behaviour

Most adults are nocturnal and are readily attracted to lights. Adults are well camouflaged among vegetation during the day.

Larvae

Most species have free-living larvae that live in loose sand. A handful of genera demonstrate the famous ‘pit-building’ technique where the larvae capture their prey in conical pits dug into the sand.

Antlion larvae — *Neuroleon sp*. – Near Carnarvon, Northern Cape
Photo by Ryan Tippett

pit, possibly made by a species of Cueta or Myrmeleon — Typical antlion pit, possibly made by a species of *Cueta* or *Myrmeleon*.
Near Carnarvon, Northern Cape
Photo by Ryan Tippett

Distribution

Antlions occur throughout South Africa and in all terrestrial habitats.

Archive

Mantispidae (Mantidflies)

Posted on 20/05/2021 by admin

This is the description of the Family Mantispidae in the online guide to the Neuroptera (lacewings and antlions) of southern Africa

The record for the above photo (by Ryan Tippett) can be found in LacewingMAP here.

•There are seven genera and at least 35 species in the region

•Most are found in the wetter eastern parts of South Africa

•Small to large sized (Wingspan 12-60 mm)

•Adults have raptorial forelimbs for capturing prey

•Adults are predatory and feed on other insects

•The larvae are parasitic & develop in the nests of spiders where they feed on the spiders eggs or on the young spiders

Archive

Nemopteridae (Thread-winged Lacewings, etc)

Posted on 20/05/2021 by admin

This is the description of the Family Nemopteridae in the online guide to the Neuroptera (lacewings and antlions) of southern Africa

The above photo by Handre Basson is of Palmipenna aeoleoptera (Rock Spoonwing). This is a rare species and is confined to Namaqualand. This record can be found in the LacewingMAP database here.

15 genera are found the region: Concroce; Laurhervasia; Thysanocroce; Tjederia; Barbibucca; Derhynchia; Halterina; Knersvlaktia; Nemeura; Nemia; Nemopistha; Nemopterella; Palmipenna; Semirhynchia; Sicyoptera

At least 60 species occur in South Africa.

Identification

Small to large (Wingspan 25-100mm)

Adults have elongate beak-like mouthparts for feeding on pollen and nectar

The forewings are clear and iridescent in most species. A handful of species have brown or black pigmented forewings, often with white tips.

The hindwings are variously modified. Often elongate with streamer, thread, ribbon, flag, spoon or paddle-like tips. Hindwings are usually coloured in white, brown or black.

*Nemopterella sp*. showing the beautiful iridescent fore-wings and the modified ‘streamer’ hind wings.
Near Carnarvon, Northern Cape
Photo by Ryan Tippett

*Nemia karooa* – Note the beak-like mouthparts for feeding on pollen and nectar.
Near Carnarvon, Northern Cape
Photo by Ryan Tippett

Behaviour

Adults of most species fly during spring or early summer. A few such as Laurhervasia setacea emerge predominantly during late summer.

Some species are diurnal, whilst the majority are nocturnal and may appear at lights in large numbers.

Habitat

Largely confined to arid and semi-arid environments, with low scrub vegetation. Often in open, rocky or sandy areas.

Larvae

All species have predatory larvae that actively chase down their prey.

The larvae of the thread-wing types have an elongated prothorax, giving them a distinctive long-necked appearance. In some the larvae are squat and rounded with short, curved and very strong jaws. However, the larvae of many in the family are poorly known.

The larvae live in fine, dry sand, often under rock overhangs or in caves.

*Tjederia namaquensis* – The long-necked appearance is due to the elongate prothorax.
Cederberg, Western Cape
Photo by Handre Basson

Distribution

The majority of the worlds species occur in the arid regions of the Western Cape, Northern Cape and Namibia. A few species occur in the drier parts of the North-West, Gauteng and Limpopo provinces and also Botswana.

A number of species have very restricted distributions.