Working Turnstones Turn Stones

BirdNote^®

Working Turnstones Turn Stones. 

For Written by Bob Sundstrom

This is BirdNote.
No book sparked interest in American birds more than John James Audubon’s “Birds of America.” The book contains Audubon’s world-famous bird paintings along with his descriptions of the birds.
One bird he profiled was the peculiar sandpiper we know today as the Ruddy Turnstone.
[Ruddy Turnstone call, https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/516982#_ga=2.34836582.6111682.1583197…, 0.43-.48]
Audubon watched the birds searching for food along the shore and wrote: 
“. . . I was delighted to see the ingenuity with which they turned over the oyster-shells, clods of mud, and other small bodies left exposed by the retiring tide. Whenever the object was not too large, the bird bent its legs to half their length, placed its bill beneath it, and with a sudden quick jerk of the head pushed it off, when it quickly picked up the food which was thus exposed to view, and walked deliberately to the next shell to perform the same operation.” 
For larger objects, turnstones employed “not only the bill and head, but also the breast, pushing the object with all their strength.”
True to their name, turnstones can turn stones — and lots of other things along the shore — in search of food. We have Audubon’s word for it. 
[Ruddy Turnstone call, https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/516982#_ga=2.34836582.6111682.1583197…, 0.43-.48]
For BirdNote, I’m Michael Stein.

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Producer: John Kessler
Executive Producer: Sallie Bodie
Editor: Ashley Ahearn
Producer: Mark Bramhill
Associate Producer: Ellen Blackstone
Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. ML 516982 Ruddy Turnstone recorded by L DeCicco 
BirdNote’s theme was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
© 2020 BirdNote   August 2020    Narrator: Michael Stein

ID#  RUTU-02-2020-08-03         RUTU-02

JJ Audubon on the Turn-Stone https://www.audubon.org/birds-of-america/turn-stone

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Ruddy_Turnstone/lifehistory