The Kentish plover is a small, pale shorebird of coasts and salty lakeshores across Europe, Africa, and Asia. It is almost absent from North America; a single vagrant turned up on an Alaskan Aleutian island in 2023. It is the Old World counterpart of the Snowy Plover; the two were long treated as one species until genetic work split them, a change adopted in 2011.
Appearance
- Appearance
- A small, pale plover, about 6–7 in (15–18 cm) long and 1.4–1.6 oz (40–44 g). Gray-brown above and white below with a white collar, dark legs, and a thin dark bill. Breeding males show a black forehead bar, rufous crown, black ear patch, and a dark patch on each side of the breast that does not meet in the middle.
Look-alikes
Very hard to tell apart by eye. Snowy Plovers are a little smaller with shorter legs and wings, and their chicks and male calls differ. In practice, location is the clue: a bird like this in the U.S. is almost certainly a Snowy Plover.
Why they get mixed upThey were considered one species until 2011. The Pacific coast population of Snowy Plover is federally threatened.
Where it lives
- Typical habitats
- sandy beaches
- tidal mudflats
- salt pans
- saline lakeshores
- Range
- Breeds from western Europe and North Africa across central Asia to China, Korea, and Japan, with a separate population in southern India and Sri Lanka. Northern birds migrate south for the winter.
- Preferred conditions
- Open, flat, sparsely vegetated sand or dried mud near salt or brackish water.
Behavior
- Diet
- Insects and their larvae, small crustaceans, mollusks, marine worms, and spiders.
- Activity
- Feeds by sight with a classic plover run-stop-peck.
Life cycle
- Nest
- A shallow scrape on bare ground, usually dug by the male and lined with pebbles, shell bits, or grass.
- Clutch size
- Usually 3 eggs
- Incubation
- About 24–26 days, shared by both parents; females mostly sit by day and males by night.
- Fledging
- Chicks leave the nest within hours. Females often desert the brood after about a week, leaving the male to raise the chicks while she may find a new mate.
Conservation
- IUCN Red List
- LCLeast ConcernLow risk of extinction
- Status
- The global population is continuing to decline, mainly from habitat loss and disturbance on beaches, and from predators such as dogs.
Culture and stories
- Culture and stories
- The English name comes from Kent: in 1801 John Latham described birds that had been shot near Sandwich, Kent.
More species to explore
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