![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
prettygoodwordturnstone (TURN-stohn) - n., either of two species of sandpipers of the genus Arenaria that turn over stones and seaweed to find food.
The food mostly being invertebrates hiding underneath, while wading around the water margins. A. interpres is the European ruddy turnstone, while A. melanocephala is the North American black turnstone -- that said, the colors are often omitted locally, and used only when there's a need to distinguish this turnstone from that one. Both breed in the Arctic and are highly migratory (the ruddy one will travel as far as South Africa). Named, of course, from its feeding habit, sometime around 1674.
---L.
The food mostly being invertebrates hiding underneath, while wading around the water margins. A. interpres is the European ruddy turnstone, while A. melanocephala is the North American black turnstone -- that said, the colors are often omitted locally, and used only when there's a need to distinguish this turnstone from that one. Both breed in the Arctic and are highly migratory (the ruddy one will travel as far as South Africa). Named, of course, from its feeding habit, sometime around 1674.
---L.
