Black-necked Stilt

Himantopus mexicanus

The black-necked stilt, also called the pied stilt, is a locally abundant shorebird of North and South American wetlands and coastlines. It is found from the coastal areas of California through much of the interior western United States and along the Gulf of Mexico as far east as Florida, then south through Central America and the Caribbean to Brazil, Peru and the Galápagos Islands, with an isolated population, the Hawaiian stilt, in Hawaii. The northernmost populations, particularly those from inland, are migratory, wintering from the extreme south of the United States to southern Mexico, rarely as far south as Costa Rica; on the Baja California peninsula it is only found regularly in winter. Some authorities, including the IUCN, treat it as a synonym of Himantopus himantopus. Source

Where it is now

In the last 8 weeks this bird was recorded 3,780 times across 33 areas (each area is a 5 degree square).

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Movement and weather

Each season it is first heard regularly where daytime highs are around 25°C (typically 18 to 28°C, from 6 areas). That range is wide, so temperature alone does not explain when it turns up.

Over the weeks it was present in the past year, its centre in North America ranged from 13°N in October to 32°N in July, about 2,000 km apart.

Arrival dates

The week it was first heard regularly in each region, after at least six weeks away. Dates differ from south to north, so a region has a range.

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Figures are effort corrected and come from automatic sound identification, which makes mistakes. How this is measured and how it compares with human observers.