BNA AMOY account (revised recently - May 22, 2012) note that: “Nocturnal foraging not observed, even during moonlit nights (Tuckwell and Nol 1997)”

I checked original source but no definition of what they considered ’night' foraging was given. Method section only state this: “Five nightly trips, each 1 h in duration, were made each season, during clear nights, sometimes with a full moon, to determine if nocturnal foraging was taking place at the Queen Sound oyster bed.” Then the results: “During 15 h of night observations we never observed foraging, although tides were low, light levels were generally high (from a full moon), and skies were clear.”

I just observed small group of six Oystercatchers (adults and juveniles) after sundown. Up to at least 3 were kept foraging at the same time (could not see all 6 when concentrating on photographing). Last photos I took was about 10 minutes after sundown and I kept observing and taking video clips to about half hour after sundown. Stopped when get pretty dark; did I know that this was never recorded before I would kept taking video recordings much longer as my video camera can record in the very low light. As I said there is no clear description of what authors consider to be ‘night hours’ and, on the other hand. 15 hours of observation does not sound like a lot.