Black-necked stilts are small (13 - 16 in.) wading birds with long,
red, stiltlike legs. They probe in mud with slender bills for food. Stilts
build their nests on marshy ground in salt marshes, shallow coastal bays
and freshwater marshes. They lay 3 or 4 buff-colored eggs, spotted with
brown, in a shallow depression lined with grass or shell fragments. The
voice is a sharp kip-kip-kip-kip. They live in North America and northern
South America. Their breeding range is along coasts from Oregon and Delaware
southward, and locally in western interior states east to Idaho, Kansas,
and Texas. Winters are spent along the Pacific Coast north to central California;
also in Forida and other Gulf Coast states.
