Kittlitz's plover
| Kittlitz's plover | |
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| At iSimangaliso Wetland Park, KwaZulu Natal, South Africa | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Charadriiformes |
| Family: | Charadriidae |
| Genus: | Charadrius |
| Species: | C. pecuarius |
| Binomial name | |
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Charadrius pecuarius (Temminck, 1823) |
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Kittlitz’s plover (Charadrius pecuarius) is a small shorebird (35-40 g) in the family Charadriidae that breeds near coastal and inland saltmarshes, sandy or muddy riverbanks or alkaline grasslands with short vegetation. It is native to much of Sub-Saharan Africa, the Nile Delta and Madagascar. It is thought to be mainly monogamous and has monomorphic plumage.
Kittlitz’s plover is a small shorebird weighing between 35-40 grams. Both male and female have a black bill, dark brown eyes with black eyelids and black legs, although sometimes the legs can appear greenish or grey. During the breeding season, the male has a white forehead, a blackish bar followed by a narrow white bar on the forecrown, whereas the rest of the crown is brown with sandy tips to the feathers. A black stripe - separated from the crown by a white supercillary stripe - runs from the bill through the eye and extends to the side of the neck forming a collar across the upper mantle. The mantle is dark grey-brown, the other upperparts are sooty brown with feathers having sandy rufous margins. The face, the chin and the upper throat are white and the rest of the underparts are yellowish, the belly is pale. Kittlitz’s Plover has blackish central tail feathers that get continuously lighter towards the side of the tail; the outer one or two pairs are completely white. The female plumage is similar to the male’s, only the black band across the forecrown is narrower. The non-breeding plumage does not differ much from the breeding one, the eye stripe is browner, the frontal bar is missing and the underparts are a lot paler. In general, adult wing length lies between 100–110 mm, adult bill length between 15–23 mm and adult tarsus length between 26–33 mm. Juvenile Kittlitz’s plovers appear similar to adults, however the black face marks are lacking, the upperparts are brown, the hindneck collar is buff and the underparts are white.
Kittliz’s plover is distributed throughout most of sub-Saharan Africa, but is also native to Madagascar and the Nile River Delta. It is common in South Africa, however rarer in arid regions of Botswana and Namibia. In Namibia, it mostly inhabits coastal regions, highlands and Ovamboland. It is more scarce in the southern lowveld of South Africa and patchy in the interior of KwaZulu-Natal and the eastern Cape. Usually it avoids mountains or densely wooded areas. The Malagasy population might result from a relatively recent immigration from mainland Africa, whereas the Madagascar plover (Charadrius thoracius) might have evolved from an earlier Kittlitz’s plover population. The two species are clearly distinct and can not interbreed. Birds from Madagascar are in general smaller than birds from continental Africa. Kittlitz’s plovers are heavier and have longer wings in South Africa compared to Madagascar, whereas Egyptian specimens have longer wings and shorter tarsi than in Madagascar. However, they are still regarded as the same species in the absence of apparent plumage difference. In Madagascar, Kittlitz’s plover is both a breeding resident and intra-island migrant and has been recorded mostly below 950m, although it has been recorded at up to 1,400m too.
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Wikipedia