The common ringed plover or ringed plover (''Charadrius hiaticula'') is a small

plover 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 subf ...

that breeds in Arctic

Eurasia Eurasia (, ) is the largest continental area on Earth, comprising all of Europe and Asia. Primarily in the Northern and Eastern Hemispheres, it spans from the British Isles and the Iberian Peninsula in the west to the Japanese archipelago ...

. The genus name ''Charadrius'' is a

Late Latin Late Latin ( la, Latinitas serior) is the scholarly name for the form of Literary Latin of late antiquity.Roberts (1996), p. 537. English dictionary definitions of Late Latin date this period from the , and continuing into the 7th century in t ...

word for a yellowish bird mentioned in the fourth-century

Vulgate The Vulgate (; also called (Bible in common tongue), ) is a late-4th-century Latin translation of the Bible. The Vulgate is largely the work of Jerome who, in 382, had been commissioned by Pope Damasus I to revise the Gospels u ...

. It derives from

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic p ...

''kharadrios'' a bird found in ravines and river valleys (''kharadra'', "ravine"). The specific ''hiaticula'' is

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

and has a similar meaning to the Greek term, coming from ''hiatus'', "cleft" and ''-cola'', "dweller" (''colere'', "to dwell").

Description

Adults are in length with a wingspan. They have a grey-brown back and wings, a white belly, and a white breast with one black neckband. They have a brown cap, a white forehead, a black mask around the eyes and a short orange and black bill. The legs are orange and only the outer two toes are slightly webbed, unlike the slightly smaller but otherwise very similar

semipalmated plover The semipalmated plover (''Charadrius semipalmatus'') is a small plover. ''Charadrius'' is a Late Latin word for a yellowish bird mentioned in the fourth-century Vulgate. It derives from Ancient Greek ''kharadrios'' a bird found in ravines and ri ...

, which has all three toes slightly webbed, and also a marginally narrower breast band; it was in former times included in the present species. Juvenile ringed plovers are duller than the adults in colour, with an often incomplete grey-brown breast band, a dark bill and dull yellowish-grey legs. This species differs from the smaller little ringed plover in leg colour, the head pattern, and the lack of an obvious yellow eye-ring.

Breeding, range and habitat

The common ringed plover's breeding habitat is open ground on beaches or flats across northern Eurosiberia and in Arctic northeast

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

. Some birds breed inland, and in western

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...

they nest as far south as northern

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...

. They nest on the ground in an open area with little or no plant growth. If a potential predator approaches the nest, the adult will walk away from the scrape, calling to attract the intruder and feigning a broken wing. Once the intruder is far enough from the nest, the plover flies off. Common ringed plovers are migratory and winter in coastal areas south to

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

. In Norway, geolocators have revealed that adult breeding birds migrate to West Africa. Many birds in

Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It i ...

and northern France are resident throughout the year.

Feeding

These birds forage for food on beaches, tidal flats and fields, usually by sight. They eat insects, crustaceans and worms.

Subspecies

There are three weakly defined subspecies, which vary slightly in size and mantle colour; they intergrade where their ranges meet: * ''C. h. psammodroma'' – Salomonsen, 1930: breeds in Iceland, Greenland, northeast Canada; winters in west Africa. It is intermediate in size and colour. * ''C. h. hiaticula'' –

Linnaeus Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the ...

, 1758: breeds from temperate western Europe north to central Scandinavia; resident or short-distance migrant to southwest Europe. It is the largest and palest subspecies. * ''C. h. tundrae'' – ( Lowe, 1915): breeds in Arctic northern Scandinavia and Asiatic Russia; winters in Africa and southwest Asia. It is the smallest and darkest subspecies. ''C. h. hiaticula'' and ''C. h. tundrae'' are among the

taxa In biology, a taxon (back-formation from ''taxonomy''; plural taxa) is a group of one or more populations of an organism or organisms seen by taxonomists to form a unit. Although neither is required, a taxon is usually known by a particular nam ...

to which the ''Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds'' (

AEWA The Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds, or African-Eurasian Waterbird Agreement (AEWA) is an independent international treaty developed under the auspices of the United Nations Environment Programme's Conventio ...

) applies.

Gallery

File:Charadrius hiaticula mating.jpg, Mating behaviour File:Charadrius hiaticula MHNT.jpg, Egg – MHNT File:Ringed plover (Charadrius hiaticula) juvenile.jpg, Juvenile File:ringedplovjuly2008.jpg, Adult File:Ringed plovers (Charadrius hiaticula) in flight.jpg, Flock in flight, with

ruddy turnstone The ruddy turnstone (''Arenaria interpres'') is a small cosmopolitan wading bird, one of two species of turnstone in the genus ''Arenaria''. It is now classified in the sandpiper family Scolopacidae but was formerly sometimes placed in the plov ...

s Charadrius hiaticula hiaticula MHNT.ZOO.2010.11.109.15.jpg, ''Charadrius hiaticula hiaticula'' - MHNT

References

External links

Ageing and sexing (PDF; 3.9 MB) by Javier Blasco-Zumeta & Gerd-Michael Heinze

Ringed plover species text in The Atlas of Southern African Birds
* * * * * * {{Authority control

common ringed plover The common ringed plover or ringed plover (''Charadrius hiaticula'') is a small plover that breeds in Arctic Eurasia. The genus name ''Charadrius'' is a Late Latin word for a yellowish bird mentioned in the fourth-century Vulgate. It derives from ...

Birds of Africa Birds of Europe Birds of Greenland Birds of Iceland Birds of Russia Birds of Scandinavia

Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus Holarctic birds