Black-winged stilt
The Black-Winged Stilt is a small wader characterised by having very long legs for the size of its body. Its long narrow beak helps it feed on small invertebrates in the mud.
It nests on the ground and has curious defensive behaviour: if an intruder approaches the nest, it runs away feigning a broken wing, but then takes flight once it has lured the predator away from the young.
Natural habit
Almost all countries of the world
- Distribution / Resident
- Breeding
- Wintering
- Subspecies
Risk level
- Extint
- Extint in the wild
- Critically endangered
- In Danger
- Vulnerable
- Near threatened
- Minor concern
- Insufficient data
- Not evaluated
Taxonomy
Physical characteristics
Biology
Reproduction
Discover how they are
Biology
The common stilt is a small wader, famous for its red long legs, its long thin bill and black and white hue. It is the most common wader, with the largest distribution in our country.
It lives in all kinds of deltas, estuaries, coastal lagoons, marshlands and shallow rivers and lakes. It can tolerate quite well areas greatly altered by human action.
Its fragile bill allows it to capture small invertebrates and mostly aquatic insects, in the mud or the surface of water, on which it feeds.
Due to its wide distribution area, its reproductive season varies greatly. It is a gregarious species that reproduce in breeding colonies, that can be formed by a few couples to hundreds of nests, which are built on the ground, that resemble a small land depression covered with plants. In the nest, it lays three to six eggs, normally four, that are brooded for 22 to 29 days by both sexes. They are very aggressive towards anything or anyone that approaches their nests and aggressions to different large rapacious and ducks have been reported.
It is sedentary, from southern United States to eastern Argentina, only avoiding the Amazon, and all Africa below Sahara, except for forest areas of the continent, India and most of South-east Asia, as well as New Guinea and Australia. In the Nearctic and the Palearctic realms, it is exclusively a summer species, reaching these areas at the beginning of April to build its nest, before returning to the south, to spend the winter in warmer areas. In the Iberian Peninsula it is an exclusively summer species.
It is a quite common species, whose main threat is habitat degradation, especially its breeding territories, caused by human activity. It is not considered endangered, despite increasing degradation of aquatic and coastal environments, which represents a future threat for the conservation of the species.
