The two-banded plover (''Charadrius falklandicus'') is a species of

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweigh ...

in subfamily

Charadriinae Plovers ( , ) are a widely distributed group of wading birds belonging to the subfamily Charadriinae. Description There are about 66 species in the subfamily, most of them called "plover" or "dotterel". The closely related lapwing subfa ...

of family

Charadriidae The bird family Charadriidae includes the plovers, dotterels, and lapwings, about 64 to 68 species in all. Taxonomy The family Charadriidae was introduced (as Charadriadæ) by the English zoologist William Elford Leach in a guide to the conten ...

.HBW and BirdLife International (2022) Handbook of the Birds of the World and BirdLife International digital checklist of the birds of the world. Version 6b. Available at: http://datazone.birdlife.org/userfiles/file/Species/Taxonomy/HBW-BirdLife_Checklist_v6b_Jul22.zip retrieved December 5, 2022 It is found in

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...

, the

Falkland Islands The Falkland Islands (; es, Islas Malvinas, link=no ) is an archipelago in the South Atlantic Ocean on the Patagonian Shelf. The principal islands are about east of South America's southern Patagonian coast and about from Cape Dubouzet ...

, and

Uruguay Uruguay (; ), officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay ( es, República Oriental del Uruguay), is a country in South America. It shares borders with Argentina to its west and southwest and Brazil to its north and northeast; while bordering ...

.Remsen, J. V., Jr., J. I. Areta, E. Bonaccorso, S. Claramunt, A. Jaramillo, D. F. Lane, J. F. Pacheco, M. B. Robbins, F. G. Stiles, and K. J. Zimmer. Version 24 July 2022. Species Lists of Birds for South American Countries and Territories. https://www.museum.lsu.edu/~Remsen/SACCCountryLists.htm retrieved July 24, 2022

Taxonomy and systematics

The two-banded plover has at times been considered

conspecific Biological specificity is the tendency of a characteristic such as a behavior or a biochemical variation to occur in a particular species. Biochemist Linus Pauling stated that "Biological specificity is the set of characteristics of living organ ...

with the

puna plover The puna plover (''Charadrius alticola'') is a species of bird in subfamily Charadriinae of family Charadriidae. It is found in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, and Peru.HBW and BirdLife International (2022) Handbook of the Birds of the World and Bir ...

(''C. alticola'') but now some treat the two as a superspecies.Remsen, J. V., Jr., J. I. Areta, E. Bonaccorso, S. Claramunt, A. Jaramillo, D. F. Lane, J. F. Pacheco, M. B. Robbins, F. G. Stiles, and K. J. Zimmer. Version 24 July 2022. A classification of the bird species of South America. American Ornithological Society. https://www.museum.lsu.edu/~Remsen/SACCBaseline.htm retrieved July 24, 2022 The puna plover is

monotypic In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group (taxon) that contains only one immediately subordinate taxon. A monotypic species is one that does not include subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa. In the case of genera, the term "unispec ...

, but the mainland and Falkland populations might represent subspecies.Wiersma, P., G. M. Kirwan, and P. F. D. Boesman (2020). Two-banded Plover (''Charadrius falklandicus''), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (J. del Hoyo, A. Elliott, J. Sargatal, D. A. Christie, and E. de Juana, Editors). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.twbplo1.01 retrieved December 5, 2022

Description

The two-banded plover is long and weighs . It has a potbellied appearance and its bill and legs are black. Adult males in breeding have a white forehead, lower face, breast, and belly. They have a black bar on the forecrown and a chestnut crown and hindneck. Their upperparts are brown. They have two black breastbands, the upper one of which is frequently incomplete. (This feature is more prevalent in the Falklands population.) Adult females' crown is duller than the male's, what is black on the male is brownish on the female, and the upper breastband has white flecks throughout. Non-breeding adults have gray instead of black and gray-brown instead of chestnut. Juveniles resemble non-breeding adults but with brown breastbands, a darker face, and buffy fringes on the upperparts feathers.

Distribution and habitat

The two-banded plover is found on the Falkland Islands and coastally to somewhat inland in Argentina, Uruguay, extreme southeastern Brazil, and central and southern Chile. It inhabits gravel shores, sand beaches, wet savanna, and short grasslands, usually near streams or ponds both fresh and brackish. Outside the breeding season it is also found on tidal mudflats. It is mostly coastal but breeds as high as in southern Argentina.

Behavior

Movement

A small part of the Chilean and Argentinian populations of two-banded plover are year-round residents. There is also a small year-round population in extreme southeastern Brazil. Most individuals from Chile and Argentina, and essentially all of those in

Tierra del Fuego Tierra del Fuego (, ; Spanish for "Land of the Fire", rarely also Fireland in English) is an archipelago off the southernmost tip of the South American mainland, across the Strait of Magellan. The archipelago consists of the main island, Isla G ...

, migrate north in Chile and to southern and eastern Uruguay and southeastern Brazil. The population on the Falklands is resident. Outside the breeding season the species is somewhat social and is found in loose flocks of up to about 200 birds.

Feeding

The two-banded plover forages at the edge of the surf, on stranded kelp mats, in short grass, and on the edges of freshwater ponds. Its diet is mostly small invertebrates including

polychaete Polychaeta () is a paraphyletic class (biology), class of generally marine invertebrate, marine annelid worms, common name, commonly called bristle worms or polychaetes (). Each body segment has a pair of fleshy protrusions called parapodia that ...

bivalve Bivalvia (), in previous centuries referred to as the Lamellibranchiata and Pelecypoda, is a class of marine and freshwater molluscs that have laterally compressed bodies enclosed by a shell consisting of two hinged parts. As a group, bival ...

gastropod The gastropods (), commonly known as snails and slugs, belong to a large taxonomic class of invertebrates within the phylum Mollusca called Gastropoda (). This class comprises snails and slugs from saltwater, from freshwater, and from land. T ...

s, insects, and spiders.

Breeding

The two-banded plover's egg season is mostly September to January but sometimes extends later. Its nest is a depression in the ground that is sometimes lined with vegetation. The clutch size is two to four eggs; both parents incubate. The incubation period and time to fledging are not known.

Vocalization

What is believed to be the two-banded plover's display song is "a repeated phrase of 2–3 mellow notes followed by a gravelly trill, e.g. 'whit-whit-whitrrrrrrt'." Frequently heard calls are "a short emphatic 'pit' or mellower 'whit'."

Status

The

IUCN The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN; officially International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natu ...

has assessed the two-banded plover as being of least concern. It has a large range, and though its population size is not known it is believed to be stable. No immediate threats have been identified.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q1275447 two-banded plover Birds of Patagonia Birds of the Falkland Islands two-banded plover Taxonomy articles created by Polbot Taxa named by John Latham (ornithologist)