Colours of Wildlife: Threebanded Plover
Created | Updated Apr 28, 2013
Threebanded Plover
Willem is a wildlife artist based in South Africa. He says "My aim is simply to express the beauty and wonder that is in Nature, and to heighten people's appreciation of plants, animals and the wilderness. Not everything I paint is African! Though I've never been there, I'm also fascinated by Asia and I've done paintings of Asian rhinos and birds as well. I may in future do some of European, Australian and American species too. I'm fascinated by wild things from all over the world! I mainly paint in watercolours. . . but actually many media including 'digital' paintings with the computer!"
Again a species I know very well – a Threebanded Plover, Charadrius tricollaris. Many species of plovers occur in South Africa; this is one of the smallest, reaching only 18 cm/7” in length. The genus it belongs to, Charadrius, mostly consists of species living on the seashore. It is one of few that occurs inland. It can be found at the edges of lakes, ponds, pans and slow-flowing rivers. It occurs widely in sub-Saharan Africa as well as on the island of Madagascar. In central and West Africa it is replaced by the similar Forbes' Plover, Charadrius forbesi.
This little plover has a delicate beauty. It has neat plumage, dark brownish-grey above and white below, with two black stripes (and a white stripe between them) on the chest; a white 'crown'-stripe around the head above the eye, and a neat ring of red skin around each eye. Its sharply pointed bill is red with a black tip. For a plover its legs are quite short. The long-legged plover species tend to live in grassland. Living at the edge of the water, it doesn't need such long legs; it can be quite funny to see it hurrying along with its short little legs whizzing beneath it. But most of the time it is in no hurry. It can stand still and watch for a long time, and then quickly dart in to catch a little insect or other critter. It mostly feeds on invertebrates like insects, spiders, small mollusks and crustaceans. Sometimes they will walk in shallow water and stir the water with a foot to disturb little critters living in it, catching them when they detect their movement. They use sight for detecting prey, unlike the long-billed wading birds that hunt by feel, constantly probing the mud with their bills.
This is a species that has actually benefited from the activity of humans. Southern Africa, and indeed much of Africa, today features a very large number of artificial lakes and ponds, mostly dams created on farms to ensure a reliable supply of water. This plover can make use of even small bodies of water and doesn't need much. They can consequently now be found everywhere in South Africa, even in the desert regions of the Kalahari and the Karroo, so long as there is some kind of surface water available. They often occur at sewage treatment works. This plover can fly very well, and will move around as conditions change. Excess rain may cause some habitat to flood, but at the same time new temporary ponds will be created elsewhere; in periods of drought they might concentrate around large bodies of water. From some inland areas they will fly to the coast during the dry winter. When conditions are stable they will remain in an area as residents. They might stake out territories for feeding as well as for breeding.
This plover performs a type of visual display, quickly bobbing its head – actually its entire body – up and down, pivoting about the hip joint. It also might utter its 'tseet-tseet' whistling call at the same time. This makes it conspicuous for a fraction of a second; the rest of the time it can be incredibly hard to spot. It might use this display to signal other plovers, or indicate to a potential predator that it is aware of it.
Before the arrival of humans these plovers bred in riverbeds, particularly where there were lots of round pebbles or stones. They make no actual nests but lay their eggs (one or two per brood) directly on the substrate, only scraping out a small hollow to keep them from rolling away; the eggs look like small pebbles and are thus well camouflaged. Today these plovers will make their nests around man-made water bodies as well, sometimes in stony or pebbly areas but sometimes even in sandy or muddy areas where the eggs are not so well disguised. Nevertheless they don't seem to encounter many problems with their breeding. Because of year-round water availability at many sites they might even raise two or three broods a year! The main breeding season is July to October, though, which in South Africa is late winter to spring. In a riverbed of course it's better to breed in the dry season. When spring comes with the rains, the chicks will be hatched and there will hopefully be plenty of food for them. The chicks, like other plovers, are open-eyed and able to run around at birth; they stay with their parents for up to six weeks.
The genus Charadrius comprises about thirty species of small plover, found throughout the world – plovers are indeed some of the most cosmopolitan kinds of birds. The plover family as a whole, the Charadriidae, also includes other genera like Vanellus (the lapwings and larger plovers), Pluvialis (the golden and grey plovers) and others. The plover family lends its name to the entire order, the Charadriiformes, which includes gulls, waders and shorebirds, auks and puffins, and many more. The order is likely an ancient one, probably having come into existence in the late Cretaceous, perhaps as much as 110 million years ago, when the dinosaurs were still going strong. From then on it has been successful and able to spread to all corners of the world (even flourishing at the north and south polar regions) and is still flourishing today. The order includes the birds recorded as making the longest migratory flights of all: the Artic Tern which flies from the north to the south pole region and back each year, and the Bar-tailed Godwit which has been recorded making a single non-stop flight of over 11 000 kilometres/7 000 miles!
