Shorebirds

Black Turnstone

The entire global population of Black Turnstones (about 95,000) nests in Alaska, primarily along a narrow section of the coastal Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta (Handel and Gill 1992). Its affinity for nesting in the lowest vegetated intertidal regions makes it especially susceptible to loss or change of habitat resulting from global sea level rise. A very large fraction of the world’s population concentrates in Prince William Sound, particularly at Montague Island, to feed on herring spawn during spring migration (Norton et al. 1990, Bishop and Green 2001, Handel and Gill 2001). This critical bottleneck in the annual cycle renders Black Turnstones vulnerable to oiling incidents such as the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill.

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Last Updated: September 18, 2008