BLACK-NECKED STILT 



By T. GILBERT PEARSON 



THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF AUDUBON SOCIETIES 

 Educational Leaflet No. 89 



One of the characteristic birds of the shallow sloughs and grassy 

 marshes of the western part of the United States is the Black-necked 

 Stilt. Its distribution is not general throughout its range, for the very 

 good reason that suitable feeding-places are few and scattered. As this 

 bird gathers its food by running about in shallow water one would hardly 

 expect to find it on lakes where the water is deep to the shore-line, or on 

 those marsh-bordered lakes where the tules grow high as a man's head. 

 It haunts chiefly little ponds where the water is so shallow that it can 

 wade all over them. 



Alexander Wilson, the ornithologist, writes : "There is a striking 

 affinity between this bird and the common Avocet, not 

 only in the peculiar form of the bill, nostrils, tongue, Characteristics 

 legs, feet, wings and tail, but extending to the voice, 

 manners, food, place of breeding, form of nest, and even the very color 

 of the eggs of both, all of which are strikingly alike." 



There is, however, a decided difference in the color of the two birds. 

 When the Black-necked Stilt is standing it appears to be wholly white 

 below, and entirely black above, the line of demarcation being very dis- 

 tinctly drawn down each side of the neck and along the boundary formed 

 by the lower edge of the wing in repose. This Stilt is one of the largest 

 representatives of the Order Limicola, or shore-birds, measuring about 

 fifteen inches from bill-tip to tail-tip. It also possesses remarkably long 

 and very slender legs. The delicately pointed bill is not so long as that 

 of the Avocet, and shows but slight tendency to curve upward towards 

 the end. 



In the breeding season Stilts usually associate in little communities 

 of four to six pairs. Writing of the nesting habits of 

 some of these birds, which Wilson studied on the coast Nesting 



of New Jersey early in the nineteenth century, he says : 



"About the first week in May they begin to construct their nests, which 

 are at first slightly formed of a small quantity of old grass scarcely suffi- 

 cient to keep the eggs from the wet marsh. As they lay and sit, however, 

 either dreading the rise of the tides, or for some other purpose, the 

 nest is increased in height with dry twigs of a shrub very common in 

 the marshes, roots of the salt grass, seaweed, and various other sub- 

 stances, the whole weighing between two and three pounds. This habit 

 of adding new material to the nest after the female begins sitting is 

 common to almost all other birds that breed in the marshes. The eggs 

 are four in number of a dark yellowish clay-color, thickly marked with 



