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Common Ringed Plover | Charadrius hiaticula
Bontbekplevier | Chorlitejo Grande
The Common Ringed Plover is a stocky plover with a single black breast band and an orange bill base, which spends September to April in varying numbers along the coast and at inland waters throughout the region. It is the commonest of the Palearctic plovers in southern Africa.
Voice
A soft, rising, whistled too-eep, often on take-off; also a short poo. On the non-breeding grounds it calls regularly in flight.
Recording: Stanislas Wroza — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
18–20 cm. Upperparts grey-brown, underparts white, with a complete breast band and a white collar above it. In breeding plumage the mask and breast band are black, the forehead white and the bill orange with a black tip; the legs are orange. In non-breeding plumage and in juveniles the mask and breast band are brownish black, the breast band is often narrower or broken in the centre, the bill mostly dark and the legs dull orange. In flight a clear white wing bar. No eye-ring, or only an inconspicuous one.
Confusion species
Little Ringed Plover Thinornis dubius is slimmer, with a yellow eye-ring, an all-dark bill, flesh-coloured legs and no wing bar. Three-Banded Plover Thinornis tricollaris has two black breast bands, a grey face and a red eye-ring. White-Fronted Plover Anarhynchus marginatus and Kittlitz's Plover Anarhynchus pecuarius lack a complete breast band.
Habitat
Tidal mudflats, estuaries, lagoons and sandy beaches, and inland the muddy shores of dams, pans, sewage works and rivers. It forages in typical plover fashion, running and stopping suddenly, often foot-trembling to disturb prey; it roosts at high tide in flocks with other small waders.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.
Range and movements
Throughout the region: most numerous along the coasts of Angola, Namibia, South Africa and Mozambique, and widespread inland but in smaller numbers in Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Eswatini and Lesotho. It breeds from Greenland and north-east Canada across Europe to north-east Siberia and winters in western Europe, Africa and south-west Asia; southern Africa forms the southern edge of the wintering range.
- Resident
- Summer visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
From October to March on almost any estuary or larger tidal flat, and inland at dams and sewage works with exposed shores. At high tide search among flocks of roosting small waders. When separating it from Little Ringed Plover, the eye-ring and wing bar help: a Common Ringed Plover taking flight always shows a white stripe.
Conservation status
Not threatened; the world population is large. Some tens of thousands of birds winter in southern Africa. Disturbance on beaches, degradation of estuaries and the loss of shallow shores through water-level regulation play a local role.
Scientific name
Charadrius hiaticula | Linnaeus, 1758
Linnaeus described the species in 1758 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. He introduced the genus Charadrius in that same work. Charadrius is Late Latin, from Ancient Greek kharadrios, a plain-coloured nocturnal bird of ravines and river valleys, from kharadra 'ravine'. hiaticula is late Medieval Latin for a plover. The specimen the first description was based on came from Sweden.