One of my favorite birds on Cumberland is the Oystercatcher. These attractive shorebirds with their formal black and white markings and bright red bills are always an eye catcher on the beach. As their name implies, they feed on oysters as well as other shellfish.

The hunting skills these birds have particularly becomes apparent when they feed on oysters. On a falling tide, when these shellfish first become exposed to the surface many of them are still partially open while still feeding. The Oystercatcher, with surgical precision, can insert its blade-like bill into the narrow opening of an oyster, cut the abductor muscle and extract the animal. This adaption for shucking oysters makes the Oystercatcher unique among shore feeding birds.

Oystercatchers are starting to pair up now on Cumberland and will be nesting soon on the beach. Their nest is just a depression in the sand, usually somewhere between the high tide line and the fore-dunes. It’s because of this birds’ nesting locations they are now considered to be a species of critical concern. Many of the isolated beaches where Oystercatchers once nested have now been developed; so like many animals, they are losing habitat. But on Cumberland Island there is seventeen and a half miles of undeveloped beach that will always remain that way; protected, as a National Seashore, and a refuge for among other things, the unique Oystercatcher.