Oystercatcher image copyright Liz Cutting, www.lizcuttingphotos.com

Much like whistling, touching my toes with my legs straight and rolling my tongue I have never been able to master accents. My Irish accent sounds much like my Scottish whilst my Yorkshire sounds very similar to my west country. It came as quite a shock to me therefore to realise that I am actually pretty good at mimicking bird calls. I remember realising this unexpected skill of mine, lying in the long grass growing thick on the bank of a saltmarsh. Acres of velvety mud lay glistening ahead of me, cut through with the snake-like meanderings of a multitude of sea-streams. Stubby, salt-frosted plants sat glinting as the sun glowed in the porcelain sky. It was a lazy day and one with the time to listen and repeat back all the bird calls that I could hear.

 I was so well hidden in my grassy recliner that frequently birds would startle on spotting me as they took off for a casual flight nearby. Much like their striking black, white and orange outfit would suggest, oystercatchers were the birds that made the loudest perturbations as they veered away from me. Descriptions of the call can’t do it justice but try whistling ‘Ker-peep, ker-peep, ker-peep!’ quickly and shrilly and you won’t have gone too far wrong. The fact that the call of the oystercatcher is hard to miss and that it is, for me, a sound synonymous with the Norfolk coast may well have been why it was one of the first calls that I managed to master lying next to the salt marsh that summer’s day.

 Not only is the oystercatchers call and plumage remarkable but their habits are too. As an oystercatcher, you would be divided in to one of two groups, either a ‘hammerer’ or a ‘stabber’. A ‘hammerer’ would crack open mussel shells by using it’s beak to pound the shell open. For this reason the beak is thick, blunt and fairly heavy. A ‘stabber’ by contrast would use it’s beak to probe the mud for worms and have a rather more slim line, tweezer-like beak to do this. Amazingly oystercatchers can actually change the shape of their beaks depending on the type of food available to them. In fact their beaks can grow and change at four times the speed of human fingernails!

 So, next time you are out taking advantage of the fresh winter’s air, listen out for the call of an oystercatcher. Perhaps with the holiday season fast approaching you can make this year the year that you master the call of the wild.

 Agnes Rothon, Dec 2010.