Ringed Plover

A chap at the Pinkhill end of the causeway at Farmoor this morning asked if I'd seen the pair of Little Ringed Plovers, smirked when I said I hadn't, and told me they were back down towards the slipway. I tracked the birds down eventually, but - loth as I am to contradict an assertive man with a large camera - they did not match the product description. Not that I have a problem with a Ringed Plover, which is what this pair turned out to be, but it's several years since I saw a LRP and even longer since I got a lens on one, and it would have been nice to have photographed some at the close quarters offered by the Farmoor causeway.

Still, Ringed Plovers are what I had, and I'm pleased to have caught this one picking some kind of invertebrate out of the dried foam and general debris on the ridged side of the reservoir. They're busy little birds, as is particularly evident from my second photo, which shows the other member of the pair charging past me slightly faster than my 1/2000 shutter speed was able to freeze. That bird is quite definitely a juvenile - its head markings are still smudgy, its collar is rather indistinct at the front, and most importantly, its head and back feathers are dark brown and are edged in white, in a way that makes them look quite scaly. At the time I was watching them I was pretty sure that the bird in my main image, with its paler back and head, sharper facial markings and dark collar, was an adult, but looking at it on a big screen the slightly scaly markings on its head and the back of its shoulders have become obvious, so now I'm not so sure. Overall, its markings are somewhere between those of a juvenile and an adult in winter plumage, and if forced to commit, I'd say the it's probably the former mid-moult towards the latter - but it wouldn't surprise me if I was wrong.

By the way, if you're wondering how I knew that these weren't Little Ringed Plovers - apart from the fact that LRPs are only two-thirds the size of their bigger cousins, which isn't especially helpful in isolation - it's the fact that both juvenile and adult Little Ringed Plovers have a bright yellow ring around the eye. Waders and shore birds are often annoyingly cryptic, so that's an unusually helpful identification feature.