The white-faced plover (''Charadrius dealbatus'') is a small shorebird of the 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 ...

. Initially described by British ornithologist

Robert Swinhoe Robert Swinhoe FRS (1 September 1836 – 28 October 1877) was an English diplomat and naturalist who worked as a Consul in Formosa. He catalogued many Southeast Asian birds, and several, such as Swinhoe's pheasant, are named after him. Bio ...

, the bird resembles the

Kentish plover The Kentish plover (''Charadrius alexandrinus'') is a small cosmopolitan shorebird (40-44 g) of the family Charadriidae that breeds on the shores of saline lakes, lagoons, and coasts, populating sand dunes, marshes, semi-arid desert, and tundra.Sz ...

(''Charadrius alexandrinus'') with which it has been much confused and sometimes considered to be a

subspecies In biological classification, subspecies is a rank below species, used for populations that live in different areas and vary in size, shape, or other physical characteristics (morphology), but that can successfully interbreed. Not all species ...

Taxonomy

The white-faced plover was first described in 1870 by the English biologist

. The type specimen came from the island of

Formosa Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is an island country located in East Asia. The main island of Taiwan, formerly known in the Western political circles, press and literature as Formosa, makes up 99% of the land area of the territorie ...

(Taiwan) and he gave it the name ''Aegialites dealbatus''. Since then the bird has been the subject of much debate and has variously been classified as being

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 '' Charadrius marginatus'', ''

Charadrius alexandrinus The Kentish plover (''Charadrius alexandrinus'') is a small cosmopolitan shorebird (40-44 g) of the family Charadriidae that breeds on the shores of saline lakes, lagoons, and coasts, populating sand dunes, marshes, semi-arid desert, and tundra.Sz ...

'', ''

Charadrius nivosus The snowy plover (''Charadrius nivosus'') is a small wader in the plover bird family, typically about 5-7" in length. It breeds in the southern and western United States, the Caribbean, Ecuador, Peru, and Chile. Long considered to be a subspecie ...

'', '' Charadrius javanicus'' and ''

Charadrius ruficapillus The red-capped plover (''Charadrius ruficapillus''), also known as the red-capped dotterel, is a small species of plover. It breeds in Australia. This species is closely related to (and sometimes considered conspecific with) the Kentish plover, ...

''. Some authors consider it to be a subspecies of ''C. alexandrinus'' while others give it full

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...

status as ''C. dealbatus''.

Description

The white-faced plover grows to a length of about . It has a rounded head with a white fore-crown and a white

supercilium The supercilium is a plumage feature found on the heads of some bird species. It is a stripe which runs from the base of the bird's beak above its eye, finishing somewhere towards the rear of the bird's head.Dunn and Alderfer (2006), p. 10 Also ...

. The crown is pale rufous brown upper parts are pale brownish-grey. The hind collar, throat and underparts are white. The beak and legs are dark and the tail short. Compared to the rather similar

, it has a thicker, blunter beak, white lores, paler crown and upperparts, less black on the lateral breast patches and a larger white wingbar.

Distribution and habitat

This bird is found along a wide seaboard area of southern China and adjacent northern Vietnam ; its wintering range extends south across eastern

Indochina Mainland Southeast Asia, also known as the Indochinese Peninsula or Indochina, is the continental portion of Southeast Asia. It lies east of the Indian subcontinent and south of Mainland China and is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the west an ...

towards

Sumatra Sumatra is one of the Sunda Islands of western Indonesia. It is the largest island that is fully within Indonesian territory, as well as the sixth-largest island in the world at 473,481 km2 (182,812 mi.2), not including adjacent i ...

. It typically inhabits sandy beaches, mudflats and saltpans, and outside the breeding season visits reclaimed areas.

Ecology

The diet of this bird has been little studied but is presumed to be similar to that of the Kentish plover which feeds on small invertebrates such as insects and their larvae, spiders, molluscs, crustaceans and marine worms. It feeds on the foreshore, searching visually for prey then dashing forward to catch the prey or probing the substrate with its beak. Its breeding habits are not known.

References

External links

White-Faced Plover
{{Taxonbar, from1=Q55111905, from2=Q7994324

white-faced plover The white-faced plover (''Charadrius dealbatus'') is a small shorebird of the family Charadriidae. Initially described by British ornithologist Robert Swinhoe, the bird resembles the Kentish plover (''Charadrius alexandrinus'') with which it ha ...

Birds of South China Fauna of Vietnam

Controversial bird taxa Taxa named by Robert Swinhoe