Himantopus himantopus
Silhouette: Edwin Price · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~20% in a week ~40%
The black-winged stilt (Himantopus himantopus) is a widely distributed, very long-legged wader in the avocet and stilt family Recurvirostridae. Its scientific name, Himantopus himantopus, is sometimes used to generalize a single, almost cosmopolitan species. Alternatively, it is restricted to the form that is widespread in Europe, Asia and Africa, which equals the nominate group of H. himantopus sensu lato. Meanwhile, the black-necked (H. mexicanus) and white-backed stilts (H. melanurus) both inhabit the Americas; the pied stilt (H. leucocephalus) ranges from Australia and New Zealand. Today, most sources accept between one and four actual species.
The black-winged stilt was formally described in 1758 by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae. He placed it with the plovers in the genus Charadrius and coined the binomial name Charadrius himantopus. He specified the type locality as southern Europe. The taxonomic name Himantopus comes from Greek, meaning "strap-foot" or "thong-foot". The black-winged stilt is now one of five species placed in the genus Himantopus that was introduced by the French naturalist Mathurin Jacques Brisson... Wikipedia →
With luck
About 10% of wildlife watchers report a Black-winged Stilt sighting in Cape Town on a given day, based on 274 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data. It is the 64th most-seen of the 196 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 20%, and over a week to about 40%, if each day is a fresh chance.
January and February
In those months about 20% of wildlife watchers report a Black-winged Stilt in Cape Town on a given day, against under 5% in August to November, the lowest months. Those are among Cape Town's driest months, with about 20 mm of rain a month against 140 mm in June.
Between 7 and 10 am
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Black-winged Stilt sightings with a recorded time, and about 9 in 10 of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is a daytime animal.
69th of 126
Of the 126 cities where we can rate Black-winged Stilt sightings, Cape Town ranks 69th at about 10%. The best odds are in Quanzhou (China, about 70%), Agra (India, about 70%) and Kota (India, about 60%).
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Black-winged Stilt is recorded against all the birds logged in Cape Town (274 verified sightings), calibrated against known sighting rates. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10% because citizen-science data supports honest approximations, not decimals, and months with records from fewer than five people show "—". How it works.
