Tuesday, August 2, 2022

Kentish Plover

The Kentish plover gets it name from the County of Kent in England, which I suspected when I first heard the name, but it has not bred in Britain since 1979. They inhabit areas of sand and salt marsh near water. I first heard of it while investigating birding in Portugal and we saw several nesting along mounds of dirt in shallow ponds near the Tagus River Estuary just south of Lisbon. 



We never got very close to them, so all I have are mostly blurry photos. 


They are small, have black bills and legs and have a mixture of brown, white and tan feathers. They are distributed quite broadly, in small swaths, small shore distributions in southern Europe, a band through central subSaharan Africa and wider in the vicinity of Ethiopia, pretty extensive in Indonesia and southeast Asia and a pretty wide swath in Central Asia.  

1 comment:

  1. Maybe you'll get a better photo in another location. Is it the same species everywhere?

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