Chapter M: P. Skinner writes: “When they get out on bare ground their speed (2)

kept running in front of the hen and sinking down on the
beach every few yards exactly as if settling down on a
nest. Occasionally while brooding in this way he would
tilt himself forward onto his breast with the closed wing
tips pointing up almost vertically over his back, the tail
depressed, and the legs scratching out sand and stones
behind him. The indifference displayed by the hen to this
performance was as noticeable as it usually is in the case
of lapwings’ “rolling” on the ground. On several other
occasions in April I saw cock ringed plovers settle down
and appear to brood for several minutes exactly as if they
were on a nest; in one case the bird kept turning round
and round on one spot, and twice at least this action was
followed by an attempt at coition.

The love flight often covers nearly a mile of ground, and both birds take part--crossing and recrossing with their bodies twisting from side to side and soft beats of the wings. The double note, according to Stanford, has a remarkably vibrant quality at these times and the throat appears to be swelled out.

_Nesting._--Both nesting sites and the nests themselves of this species vary considerably. The commonest site is among the sand and shingle above high-water mark on the seashore. In some cases the eggs are laid in a hollow scratched in the sand with no lining of any kind, in others small fragments of cockle shells and small stones are collected and imbedded, while other nests are more or less substantially built, from a few dead bents carelessly arranged to well-made cups in which almost any material available is utilized, such as driftwood, rabbits’ droppings, stems of leaves, and shore plants, etc. On some beaches where there is no sand the eggs may be found lying on the bare pebbles, while on the north Norfolk coast they are often placed under shelter of sea heath, and nests have been met with in cornfields, several miles from the sea, or on open grassland in sewage farms inland.

_Eggs._--Normally four in number, occasionally three on late layings, while instances of five are rare. In color they vary from stone color to ocherous or clay yellow sometimes with a warm tinge, spotted as a rule rather sparingly with brownish black. Occasionally varieties with large blotches of sepia are met with and white eggs have been recorded as well as bluish eggs, without markings. The shell is deep green when viewed from within. The measurements of 100 British eggs, made by the writer, averaged 35.9 by 25.9 millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes measure =39= by 26.5, 37 by =28.5=, =32.2= by 25 and 32.7 by =24= millimeters. Eggs from Iceland and other northern localities are decidedly smaller.

_Young._--Incubation is shared by both sexes which relieve one another at short intervals and the period is variously estimated at from 22 to 25 days; probably 24 or 25 days represents the average. The young are hatched within 24 hours and leave the nest as soon as the down is dry. Apparently a second brood is reared in some cases, but many of the late nests may be second or third layings.

Doctor Ekblaw writes:

The old birds were wildly agitated whenever I approached,
and by the customary simulation of injury attempted to
lead me away from the nest. The fledglings ran about as
soon as hatched, and like all little shorebirds were quick
to respond to a warning signal and sink into pebble-like
immobility. The weather was so cold that the old birds did
not leave the young, for when the brood was separated both
parents sheltered some of the little ones.

_Plumages._--The plumages and molts are fully described in A Practical Handbook of British Birds, edited by H. F. Witherby (1920).

_Food._--Insects, including Coleoptera (_Apion_, _Aphodius_, _Haliplus_, _Hydroporus_, etc.), Crustacea, especially the smaller species (Gammaridae, Amphipoda, etc.), Mollusca, chiefly small marine univalves, such as Littorina, Annelida (earthworms), and vegetable matter (seeds of _Polygonum_, etc.).

_Behavior._--This is an attractive and inoffensive species, sociable in its habits and met with in flocks of considerable size out of the breeding season, when their simultaneous maneuvers on the wing are a very characteristic feature of the great estuaries, the flocks appearing to change from light to dark as the upper or under surfaces are exposed. They may also be seen on the mud flats, making short runs at intervals, when the movements of the legs and feet are so rapid that the eye can not follow them.

_Voice._--John T. Nichols contributes the following:

A rather clear, not very loud, low-pitched whistle, given
on the ground as much as in the air, rather infrequent.
This may be written _kruip_ or _puik_, occasionally
distinctly two syllabled and suggesting the semipalmated
plover’s call, but lower pitched. It was heard in late
September from several birds loosely associated with a
larger number of scattered dunlin on tidal sands north
of Liverpool. They usually took wing in silence, and the
species seems to be a rather silent one as seen here
and elsewhere on British shores in September. They were
very likely not traveling, and their voice therefore not
comparable with that of the semipalmated on home shores.
Also the note described is very likely not analogous with
the full, loud-flight note of the transient semipalmated
plover.

_Enemies._--During the autumn and winter months the flocks are occasionally harried by a migrating merlin (_Falco columbarius aesalon_), and some clutches of eggs are annually destroyed by marauding Corvidae (crows) and Laridae (gulls). On some parts of the coast which are much exposed, great damage is done by exceptionally high tides, as many nests are built close to the high-water mark.

_Fall._--In Greenland Manniche (1910) observed that the old birds left in pairs about the first week in August, as soon as the young were grown up. The young birds immediately went to the shores and estuaries, consorting with young sanderlings and turnstones and leaving for the south early in September. At the Westmann Isles in south Iceland they leave between September 20 and October 10.

_Winter._--In the British Isles the wintering birds are to be met with in flocks on most of our larger estuaries. When on the wing they sometimes associate with dunlin and also occasionally with redshanks.

DISTRIBUTION

_Breeding range._--In the Old World, commonly in the British Isles and sparingly in the Faroes and Iceland; also probably on Bear Island and a few pairs in Spitsbergen as well as on Waigatz, Kolguev, and Nova Zembla. On the European Continent, from the Arctic Ocean south to the Mediterranean, chiefly on the seacoasts, and only locally by lakes and rivers. In the Mediterranean it is local on some of the islands and nowhere plentiful. The north Asiatic race has been separated, while in the New World its breeding range includes both coasts of Greenland and perhaps the east coast of Baffin Land, unless the last statement is due to confusion with the semipalmated plover.

_Winter range._--Many remain in the British Isles through the winter, but birds from northern Europe migrate to the Mediterranean region and Africa, where they have been recorded as far south as Cape Province and Natal, the majority wintering south of the Sahara. The Atlantic Isles (Canaries, Madeira, and Azores) are visited on passage, and Asiatic birds have been recorded from the Indo-Malayan archipelago and even Australia, though some doubt has been cast on this.

_Spring migration._--The principal passage at Gibraltar takes place in March, the latest birds leaving in April. From about mid March to mid April old birds are on passage northward and the breeding ground in Norway is reached in April, and in Sweden from late March onward.

_Fall migration._--In northern Europe (Norway and Sweden) the southward movement takes place in September and at the Straits of Gibraltar the passage lasts from September to November. At Heligoland young birds begin to pass as early as the end of June and the beginning of July.

_Casual records._--In Jan Mayen it apparently occurs in some numbers, but is not known to breed. Barbados, one, Chancery Lane, September 10. Gould’s record of one from Port Stevens, Australia, is a somewhat questionable one. One obtained at Sultanpur, south of Delhi, November, 1878; another at Gilgit, October, 1879. (These records must refer to the Siberian race, as also probably the Chilean occurrence and that from Sitka, Alaska.)

_Egg dates._--In northeast Greenland Manniche found eggs from June 17 to July 18, while in Nova Zembla the young were recently hatched at the beginning of August and eggs probably laid late in June or early in July. In the British Isles eggs have been met with in March, but most eggs are laid from the end of April onward. April 16 to 30 (5 dates), May 1 to 14 (10 dates), May 15 to 31 (21 dates), June 1 to 30 (23 dates), July 1 to 30 (7 dates).

CHARADRIUS DUBIUS CURONICUS Gmelin

LITTLE RINGED PLOVER

_Contributed by Francis Charles Robert Jourdain_

HABITS

The little ringed plover owes its place in the American list to a casual occurrence at Kodiak Island, Alaska. It is noteworthy that in J. F. von Brandt’s paper in the Journal für Ornithologie, 1891, the Alaskan specimen is recorded as “_Charadrius alexandrinus_ Pall.” There is also a specimen in the United States National Museum (No. 39523) which is said to have been taken at San Francisco, but some doubt appertains to the latter record.

_Spring._--The range of this species does not extend far to the north in western Europe and it is only a rare straggler to the British Isles. In northern Germany it appears in fair numbers on the larger rivers and at lakesides, about the middle of March, but except in southern Sweden few cross the Baltic to breed.

_Courtship._--H. F. Witherby (1919) has some interesting notes on this species which was breeding in company with the Kentish plover (_Charadrius alexandrinus_) near Dunkerque, in northern France.

On April 28 the little ringed plovers were flying round
after each other, with a beautiful slow, long, flap of
the wings, much like the flight of a large butterfly and
uttering a pleasing little song. This was evidently a
“courtship” action and we found many “scoops” in the sand,
but no eggs.

Liebe describes the song flight as beginning with a zigzag oblique ascent, followed by short horizontal flights at various angles over the gravelly bed where the hen is sitting, uttering meantime his musical whistle, which is answered by the bird beneath, and ending in a sharp descent in a curve toward the water’s edge and thence with low, skimming flight to the hen. The little ring plover is a much more demonstrative and noisy species than the ringed plover and when its breeding haunts are approached instead of running off with a low whistle and then flying a short distance ahead, it flies round and round the intruder with loud repeated whistling notes. Naumann (1887) expresses the pairing song by the words “_duh, du dull lull lullullul_,” taken in slow time and ending with a wonderful trill only to be heard on the breeding ground.

_Nesting._--Continental writers lay much stress on the fact that this bird by preference always makes the nest in gravelly patches rather than in sand. This is not invariably the case, as the bird builds freely on sand banks in rivers where there is no shingle or gravel, and at times also on dry mud. It may be found nesting far inland, but nearly always in the neighborhood of water and shows a decided preference for the shores of fresh-water lakes and the larger rivers rather than the seashore.

_Eggs._--The normal clutch is four, though three is not an uncommon number, and generally they are readily distinguishable from those of the other sand plovers. They are more pyriform in shape than those of the Kentish plover, and average less in size than either of the two other common European species. In color the ground color is often grayish when fresh but dries out to a yellowish stone or pale reddish ocherous, with many fine streaks and spots of dark brown and numerous small ashy streaks or spots. On the whole the markings are paler and scantier than with the Kentish plover, but in rare cases large blotches of rich brown and ash colors are found in some sets, and others show an approach to the normal type of Kentish plover. The eggs are laid in a mere hollow without lining in the gravel. The measurements of 100 eggs (68 by the writer and 32 by Rey) average 29.8 by 22.08 millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes measure =32.8= by 23, 30.1 by =23.5=, =27.3= by 21.1, and 28.6 by =21= millimeters.

_Young._--Incubation is said by Naumann (1887) to be apparently performed by both sexes, but in warm and sunny weather the eggs are left for long periods uncovered. The period is over 22 days, probably 23 or 24 (not 16 or 17 as erroneously given by Naumann). Only one brood is reared in the season as a rule, but some dates are extremely late and point to an occasional second brood.

_Plumages._--The plumages and molts are fully described in A Practical Handbook of British Birds, edited by H. F. Witherby (1920).

_Food._--Definite records are scanty, but it is evident that the main food consists of insects, including the smaller Coleoptera and their larvae; Diptera and larvae; Neuroptera (Phryganeidae or caddis flies and larvae). Naumann also found a small worm in one case in the stomach.

_Behavior._--Witherby (1919) writes:

The little ringed plover is even more demonstrative than
the Kentish and it is shyer and more difficult to mark onto
its nest or young. Both species have a very plaintive alarm
note which they utter constantly as they fly round the
intruder, but the Kentish is less fussy and less noisy than
the little ringed. When one is near the young both species
go through various outcries, such as running along the
ground crouching low with head stretched out, lying on the
side with one wing up, the legs stretched out and the tail
spread, or with the breast on the ground and both wings
half spread, but the performance of the Kentish is much
less abandoned than that of the little ringed.

P. W. Munn (1921) also writes:

The behavior of the birds at their nest is totally
different from Kentish plovers, which are not demonstrative
whilst they have eggs; but the little ringed plover flies
wildly round and round, twisting and doubling and uttering
its wild whistle, or else runs frantically about on the
ground, whistling plaintively.

_Enemies._--The eggs are occasionally taken by Corvidae, and the birds themselves sometimes fall victims to Accipitres.

DISTRIBUTION

_Breeding range._--Central and southern Europe, from France, Denmark, southern Sweden, southern Finland and 64° N. in Russia, south to the Mediterranean and its islands and Africa north of the Sahara. In Asia its range extends across Siberia to the Pacific and includes also Japan. In India and the Philippines, Hainan, and Formosa it is replaced by other subspecies. It does not breed in the British Isles, but nests in Madeira and the Canaries.

_Winter range._--Winters in tropical Africa, south to the Gold Coast, Fernando Po, the lower Niger, Lakes Rudolf, Albert and Victoria Nyanza, and the Red Sea coast; in Asia to Arabia and India and also to the Sunday Islands and perhaps New Guinea.

_Spring migration._--In south Spain it arrives about mid March and is widely distributed in April, while in the eastern Mediterranean the passage takes place in Crete and Corfu in April. On Heligoland it is only a rare straggler.

_Fall migration._--The north German breeding birds leave for the south at the end of September. Farther south the presence of immigrants from the north among the breeding birds is seldom noted.

_Casual records._--In the British Isles there are about 10 well-authenticated records; April (2), August (4), and October (1 or 2). The supposed records from Iceland and the Faroes are not authenticated. Gaetke only records 2 at Heligoland in 50 years.

_Egg dates._--In northern Africa eggs have been found from March onward; in Spain and the Balearic Isles, March 16 (1 date), April 15 to 30 (3 dates), May 1 to 14 (4 dates), 15 to 30 (3 dates); late dates, June 12 and July 11. In France and Germany, May 3 to 17 (7 dates), 18 to 31 (8 dates); June 1 to 15 (5 dates); late dates, July 19 and 22.

CHARADRIUS MELODUS Ord

PIPING PLOVER

HABITS

_Contributed by Winsor Marrett Tyler_

Wilson and Audubon were familiar with the piping plover as a common summer resident on the sandy beaches of the Atlantic coast. Audubon found it breeding as far north as the Magdelen Islands and wintering abundantly on the coast of Florida.

During the years between the time of these early writers and the present, the species has been subjected to many seasons of spring and autumn shooting which, in the closing years of the nineteenth century, brought the bird nearly to the point of extinction.

It is readily seen why persistent shooting threatened this bird’s existence. Its breeding range on the coast extends for hundreds of miles in a northerly and southerly direction, but owing to the bird’s very restricted nesting site it is narrowed in many places to a strip of beach only a few yards wide. Fortunately legislation intervened and removed the smaller plovers from the list of game birds, so that at the present time the piping plover is fast becoming one of our common summer residents again.

_Spring._--Compared to most of the waders, the piping plover has a short and safe migration route. Moving along the coast where spring is further advanced than in the interior of the country, and having to pass over no large bodies of water on its way to its breeding ground, the bird pushes northward early in the season, often arriving in New England during the last days of March, the first of the shorebirds to reach our beaches.

_Courtship._--In his notes A. C. Bent describes the courtship thus: “I saw and heard the nuptial flight and song of this bird. He flew in large circles or figure 8s low over the back beach near the marsh for several minutes, giving constantly a peculiar twittering whistling song.” Another entry in his notes under date, May 20, reads: “Saw piping plover mating, two males following one female. They were running around her in crouching attitude, with wings spread and trailing and with tail spread in display, uttering whistling notes.”

I once saw a male bird come up behind a crouching female and stand at full height close to her with his breast feathers puffed out and head held high, his neck stretched upward so that it was long and slim, the bird both in posture and shape resembling an upland plover. For a minute or two he stood thus while his feet beat a rapid tatoo on the sand. In this attitude of display he appeared bright colored and conspicuous in contrast to the female and the band across his breast (complete in his case) stood out sharply defined against the adjacent snowy feathers.

_Nesting._--The typical nesting site of the piping plovers is the belt of sand bordering lake or ocean well above high-water mark, where the surface is becoming diversified and pebble strewn and wisps of beach grass begin to grow. Here they lay their eggs, commonly with little preparation for their reception other than a slight hollowing of the light sand, but not infrequently they collect small stones, bits of shell, or driftwood and line their nests with them or lay them near by.

The following quotations indicate differences in the appearance of the nests. In a letter to Mr. Bent, Allen H. Wood describes a very unusual nest. He says: “The nest was a hollow scooped in a mass of sand which had been piled up to a height of nearly 10 inches. Whether the birds formed the pile or not, I do not, of course, know, but a very careful examination failed to show how else the pile could have been formed.” A. C. Bent speaks in his notes of finding at Dartmouth, Mass., “three nests containing four eggs each, all on a high, sandy and pebbly beach in the heart of a tern colony. The nests were hollows in the sand, profusely lined with broken pieces of white shell and were quite conspicuous.” E. W. Hadeler found on the shore of Lake Erie, at Painesville, Ohio, a paved nest. He says in his notes that there were “four eggs, almost the same color as the ground and stones, laid in a slight depression on some very small flat stones and around the nest were stones of all shapes and sizes.” Philipp and Bowdish (1917) in New Brunswick “found a small colony of breeding birds, five nests, each containing four eggs, being located. The nests were on sandy beach, some in the open, others among sparse clumps of beach grass. They were slight hollows in the sand, some quite unlined, others with a well-formed rim of bits of broken shell or slate.” In a letter to Mr. Bent, Edward R. Ford calls attention to some birds nesting in an unusual environment. He says:

At Dune Park, Ind., the piping plover, to the number of
five or six pairs, has taken advantage of the widening of
the beach (through the operations of a sand company which
has removed part of the dunes) and lays its eggs at a
considerable distance from the water’s edge. The old ridges
formed by the tramway beds, from which the rails have been,
for the most part, removed; the old cinder heaps, bits of
scrap iron and other odds and ends of human labor, with
here and there patches of vetch and coarse grass, seem well
suited to its requirements.

In common with some of its near relatives, the piping plover has the habit of making additional hollows in the sand in the vicinity of the hollow in which its eggs are laid. These hollows have been termed cock nests and have been compared to the nests which the male of some of the wrens builds while his mate is sitting.

My notes, taken on Cape Cod in the company of Charles A. Robbins in mid April, refer to this subject:

After some 10 minutes, during which time the two birds
stood motionless on the sand facing the wind, they began to
move about, the male taking visible interest in the female
and following her as she walked away. They came to a place
back of the beach where stones lay sparsely scattered on
the dry sand and little bunches of beach grass and patches
of Hudsonia were growing. Here the male stopped at a spot
between two stones, lowered his breast to the ground and
kicked out alternately with his legs scratching the sand
from beneath him. Then moving off a little way he did the
same in another spot while the female came to the place
between the stones and continued the hollowing process
which he had begun. Nearly, if not quite, in time with
their rapidly moving legs, the birds uttered a series
of short, high-pitched whistles, all on the same note,
having the piping quality of their common call. When the
scratching stopped, the notes stopped.

During perhaps a quarter of an hour the birds continued
to scratch and pipe until several little hollows had been
begun and abandoned. The female, however, scratched for the
most part in the hollow between the stones, digging it out
to a depth of an inch. Soon this phase of activity passed
off and the birds began to feed.

During the hour the birds were under observation neither
one made its bobbing motion.

_Eggs._--[AUTHOR’S NOTE: Four eggs are the almost invariable rule with the piping plover; rarely only three are laid in second sets, and I have found one set of five. They are ovate to short ovate in shape and have no gloss. The ground colors vary from “light buff” to “cartridge buff” or buffy white. They are sparingly, but quite evenly, marked with small spots, or fine dots, of blackish brown or black, and sometimes with a few underlying spots of “pallid purplish gray.” They are almost invisible on the sand or among small pebbles. The measurements of 71 eggs average 31.4 by 24.2 millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes measure =34.4= by 25.3, 31.8 by =26.4=, =29.2= by 23.8 and 30 by =23= millimeters.]

_Young._--Gayle Pickwell (1925) describes in detail the hatching of an egg and ascertained that the young birds may leave the nest a few hours later. He says: “It soon refused to remain in the nest. Finally, it left, and while it was tottering insecurely away the parent bird came running up with little chuckles of solicitude.”

Alexander G. Lawrence, of Winnipeg, Manitoba, says in his notes:

Careful search of the sand spit revealed a number of small
white moving points, which later search proved to be baby
piping plovers. While I was chasing one it tripped, fell on
its back, and lay as if stunned, deceiving me so completely
that I turned to get my camera to make a close-up picture
of the little fellow. No sooner had I moved away than he
sprang up and ran pell-mell over the sand, and the chase
commenced again.