Little Ringed Plover Oare Marshes

Today turned out warm and briefly calm for a while in the afternoon when I arrived at Oare Marshes. It was lovely to see a few of the usual birds on the East Flood, and a kind couple kindly pointed out a Peregrine Falcon on top of one of the electricity pylons inland of the West Flood hide.

Shortly after that I picked out a Little Ringed Plover, Charadrius dubius, (Scopoli, 1786), on the little mud spit on this side of the East Flood, from its yellow eye-ring, and then its noticeably black bill. I rather missed the pattern of white above the eye narrowing to the rear, but continuing and widening centrally over the front of the black forehead, but was reminded of this by the wonderful BTO video ID guide. This was my first ever definite sighting of this species, so it was very exciting indeed! It really did seem to have superficially pretty much the same black and white head pattern as a Ringed Plover. It bounced or "bobbed" up and down a little, and did seem a bit more slender and fragile generally. Some photos did seem to suggest a thinner beak than the commoner Ringed Plover.

There are about 1200 - 1400 breeding pairs in the UK, and the first known breeding was apparently in 1938, and it has been greatly encouraged by various gravel pit constructions over the latter half of the 20th Century. It is a summer visitor, over-wintering in West and possibly also Central Africa. The UK breeding population is about 1% of the European population, and the birds that come to the UK and western Europe are of the subspecies curonicus. In the photo below the dark eye-stripe clearly dips well down behind the eye, almost into a point.

The birds rely on fairly bare ground, only partly vegetated, so require newly disturbed habitat on a fairly regular basis. Predator control by placing cages over the nests seems to have something of a positive effect, together with habitat management, improving productivity and gradually increasing numbers. From the breadth of the breast band in the photo below I would guess that this bird is a male.

A fly got into the background of the photo below.