Using csh & tcsh

Colophon

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The animal featured on the cover of Using csh and tcsh is an oystercatcher, a wading shore bird that is found on every continent but Antarctica. This striking-looking bird has sharply contrasting black and white plumage, scarlet irises, and a long, bright orange bill that is compressed along the sides.

Most oystercatchers form permanent pair bonds. Their breeding grounds are usually a short distance inland from their feeding grounds, and many pairs return to the same breeding ground each spring. The incubation period is 25 to 28 days, with an average of three eggs per clutch. Oystercatchers are unusual among shore birds in that they feed their young for the first six weeks or so. The diet of oystercatchers consists mainly of bivalve mollusks, such as cockles, mussels, and oysters, crabs, periwinkles, lugworms, and earthworms. Chicks learn to hunt for worms as young as six weeks, using the Herbst's corpuscles, tactile organs on their bills, to locate them in the sand. However, it can take years for an oystercatcher to perfect the technique of opening mollusk shells.

There are two methods of opening mollusk shells: hammering and stabbing. In ...