The Black Turnstone is a seasonal migrant along the Pacific coast that searches for food by turning over rocks and seaweed.
It is blackish-brown with a white belly and a short, slightly upturned bill. The short legs are usually dark, sometimes dark red or pinkish.
Black Turnstones are Pacific coast shorebirds. A geolocator study tracked 23 birds between breeding and wintering areas and identified two high-use migration regions: Cook Inlet and Shelikof Strait in Alaska, and the Haida Gwaii and Alexander archipelagos in British Columbia and southeastern Alaska.
About 85% of the global population nests on Alaska’s central Yukon–Kuskokwim Delta, and the Haida Gwaii–Alexander Archipelago region was also an important winter area. Northbound migration lasted longer than southbound migration, and staging was mainly observed on northbound trips. None of the tagged birds went to northern Montague Island, and only a few stopped elsewhere in Prince William Sound.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.
Black Turnstones depend on Pacific coastal habitats during breeding, migration, and winter. The paper identifies coastal pollution, infrastructure development, and climate change as potential causes of habitat loss or degradation across breeding and nonbreeding areas.