Common Ringed Plover Charadrius hiaticula 劍鴴
Category I. Rare winter visitor.
IDENTIFICATION
Feb. 2010, Kinni Ho.
17-19 cm. Differs from Little Ringed Plover in having slightly longer, dull orange legs, less finely-tipped bill that has an orange base (though this may be small or covered in mud), more extensive dark on the face below and behind the eye and obvious white wing bar in flight, and in lacking yellowish orbital ring. Especially in breeding plumage, the chest band is broader and darker than on Little Ringed Plover. Generally confined to intertidal mudflat.
VOCALISATIONS
The typical call likely to be heard in HK is a disyllabic and inflected ‘poo-eep’ or ‘tyu-ee’.
DISTRIBUTION & HABITAT PREFERENCE
Apart from the first record, which occurred on a drained and abandoned fish pond at San Tin, all records are from the intertidal areas of Deep Bay where Little Ringed Plover is rare.
OCCURRENCE
First recorded on 14 April 1979 (Cooper 1981), the second did not occur until 1991, since when it has occurred approximately once every two years. Extreme dates are 24 September to 14 April, though most records have occurred from 21 October to 14 March.
BEHAVIOUR, FORAGING & DIET
No observations.
RANGE & SYSTEMATICS
Breeds north of the Arctic Circle from northeast Canada, Greenland and Iceland across northern Eurasia to the Bering Sea, and winters mainly in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, parts of India and casually further east (Wiersma et al. 2020). In China a migrant through the northwest and northeast, and a migrant or winter visitor to southeast and southern coastal provinces (Liu and Chen 2020).
Three subspecies are recognised, of which C. h. tundrae is presumed to occur in HK as it breeds in northern Eurasia as far east as the Bering Sea.
CONSERVATION STATUS
IUCN: Least Concern. Population trend decreasing.
Cooper, G. C. H. (1981). Systematic List for 1979. Hong Kong Bird Report 1979: 8-43.
Wiersma, P., G. M. Kirwan, and P. F. D. Boesman (2020). Common Ringed Plover (Charadrius hiaticula), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (J. del Hoyo, A. Elliott, J. Sargatal, D. A. Christie, and E. de Juana, Editors). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.corplo.01
Liu, Y. and Y. H. Chen (eds) (2020). The CNG Field Guide to the Birds of China (in Chinese). Hunan Science and Technology Publication House, Changsha.
