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 tides 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 ditTerence in the color of the two birds. 
When the Black-necked Stilt is standing it appears to be wholly white 
belov/, 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 Limicolcc, 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. Whdting 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 : Habits 
“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 
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