All species › Waders, gulls and terns › Plovers and lapwings › Three-Banded Plover
Three-Banded Plover | Thinornis tricollaris
Driebandplevier | Chorlitejo Tricollar
The Three-Banded Plover is the small, nervous plover of inland dams and river banks, with two black breast bands, a grey face and a bright red eye-ring. It constantly bobs its rear end and, when disturbed, flies off low over the water with stiff wingbeats.
Voice
A high, piercing, whistled weet-weet or tiu-eet, often on take-off; in the breeding season also a rapid, chirping series.
No recording with a suitable Creative Commons licence is available for this species yet.
Identification
17–18 cm; slim, with a relatively long tail extending well beyond the wing tips. Upperparts dark brown, face and throat grey, forehead white, with a white supercilium that forms a ring behind the crown. Two black breast bands separated by a white band. Bright red eye-ring, bill red with a black tip, legs flesh-coloured to dull orange. In flight a narrow white wing bar and white tail sides. The sexes are alike. Juveniles have a brownish upper breast band, a brown forehead and pale feather edges.
Confusion species
Forbes's Plover Thinornis forbesi has a brownish-grey forehead and face, a white stripe that starts only behind the eye and a broader lower breast band, and lives on dry grassland in the north. Common Ringed Plover Charadrius hiaticula has one breast band, a white collar and no red eye-ring. Chestnut-Banded Plover Anarhynchus pallidus is pale sandy with a narrow chestnut breast band.
Habitat
The shores of dams, rivers, streams, pans and vleis, preferably with gravel, stones or firm mud; also sewage works and rocky streams. Rarely on the coast, and then in estuaries. It forages along the waterline for insects and small invertebrates, often singly or in pairs. The nest is a scrape in gravel or on bare ground close to water.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.
Range and movements
Over most of the region: South Africa, Lesotho, Eswatini, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Zambia, Malawi and Angola; absent only from the driest parts of the Namib and the Kalahari without surface water. Beyond the region north through East Africa to Ethiopia and Sudan, and on Madagascar.
- Resident
- Summer visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- Winter visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Year-round at almost any inland dam or river bank with gravel or stones. The bird is often noticed only when it takes off with a high whistle and lands again a little further on. Approach slowly along the waterline: if you stand still, it returns and feeds, bobbing its rear end.
Conservation status
Not threatened; common and widespread. It has benefited from the construction of dams. Nests on shores are lost locally to sudden rises in water level and trampling by livestock.
Scientific name
Thinornis tricollaris | (Vieillot, 1818)
Vieillot described the species in 1818 as Charadrius tricollaris; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Thinornis was introduced in 1845 by Gray. Thinornis is Greek, from this, thinos 'beach, sandbank' and ornis 'bird'. tricollaris is Latin for 'three-collared' — for the two black breast bands with a white band between them. The specimen the first description was based on came from Cape Town, South Africa.