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Common Ringed Plover

Common Ringed Plover

Charadrius hiaticula

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The Common Ringed Plover is a small, compact plover of open shores and flats, breeding across northern Eurasia, Greenland and Arctic north-eastern Canada. It is crisply marked with a black breast band and face mask, orange legs and a short orange-and-black bill. Most populations migrate to winter on coasts south to Africa, though some in western Europe are resident. It is widespread and numerous.

Did you know?

  • When a predator nears the nest, adults perform a dramatic broken-wing display to lure it away.
  • It sometimes feeds by trembling one foot on wet sand to flush hidden prey.

Voice

Flight call

About the species

Identification

Grey-brown back and wings, white underparts and a clear black breast band. The head has a brown cap, white forehead and black mask around the eyes; the short bill is orange and black, and the legs orange. In flight a long white wing bar shows; the call is a clear, two-syllable “too-li”. Told from Little Ringed Plover by the lack of a yellow eye-ring, the orange bill base and the white wing bar.

Family

Charadriidae

Size

Medium (thrush)

Colours

brown, white, black, orange

About the habitat

Open, sparsely vegetated shores: sandy and shingle beaches, tidal flats, estuaries, rocky coasts, lake and river margins, gravel bars and gravel pits; also tundra and fell heaths.

Diet

Small invertebrates such as insects and their larvae, marine worms, small crustaceans and molluscs, picked from wet sand, mud or shingle, by day and night.

Behaviour

A typical run-stop-peck forager that sometimes patters its foot on wet sand to flush prey. Seasonally monogamous; it nests in a shallow scrape lined with pebbles and shell fragments. Both parents incubate 3–4 eggs and tend the precocial chicks, which fledge in about three weeks. Adults perform a broken-wing display to lure predators away. Outside the breeding season it gathers in small flocks on coasts and shores.

Sources

Photo: Charles J. Sharp, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Common ringed plover (Charadrius hiaticula) Oppdal.jpg

Sound: Sonothèque ADVL, XC1048904, CC0 1.0 https://xeno-canto.org/1048904

Text: Wikipedia (English) + FinBIF species descriptions, CC BY-SA 4.0; FinBIF: CC BY 4.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_ringed_plover

See also