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tundrae or semi-p? (1 Viewer)

Joern Lehmhus

Well-known member
We watched this bird from very close in comparison with 2 little ringed plovers, yesterday afternoon in Southern Germany (Wagbachniederung near Waghäusel).

The light are above the eye looked thin and light brown most of the time; but when the bird was preening-resting it looked like a very thin white stripe.

I guess it´s just a tundrae- common ringed plover; but I don´t remember seing one where the white above the eye was not visible during most of the observation time. It did not call during observation.

What do you think?
 

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Well within the range of variability, I guess, Joern. The darker back seems to preclude hiaticula or something like C. semipalmatus. The narrow supraocular looks like many I see here.
 
Hi Joern,
While I have never seen Semi-P or tundrae Ringed(we do get small dark Ringed Plovers on migration here,but these are considered to be small northern hiaticula from Iceland and Greenland),I would consider this bird to probably be a tundrae(given their breeding range,true tundrae should be regular enough in continental Europe at this time of year?).
Features which would support this ID are the thick breast band(usually thinner on Semi-P),loral pattern(okay,so adult summer Semi-P doesn't have the obvious loral pattern of juvs,but most pics that I've seen online show birds with thin loral stripes) and perhaps the fact that the orbital ring,though clearly present in your sketch,may not be as obvious as in most Semi-P's at this time of year?Also,the bill may not be quite as stubby as in most SPP.
Did anyone manage to get pics of the bird?They could be quite helpful.
Harry
 
Hi Charles, Hi Harry,

Charadrius hiaticula tundrae is what I suspspect it is and the eye ring was even less obvious in the field than in my drawing-
What was astonishing me is that though the supraocular area was lighter then the rest of the brown head area; most of the time it also looked brown; something that i had not seen in the probable tundrae I had observed before, some time ago.
-but then after preening and resting there was also a thin white supraocular area present.
Date would also fit for tundrae in my limited experience.

Pics were made by other people and I hope to obtain some within the next weeks.
 
Yes, would have been nice if it called, but it did not. Whereas the male Little Ringed Plover was like getting a nervous breakdown-with tailfanning towards this Plover; approaching him to about 20cm, and giving lots of calls.
But he didn´t dare to attack him and this plover did not show much reaction. It slowly walked some meters, ate a big dragonfly larva from the shallow water, walked back to the dry land and started resting and preening; giving a somewhat exhausted expression as if it had had a long flight (but it did look perfectly healthy).
 
I have seen the paper photographs made by a friend now and the bird is clearly a Charadrius hiaticula.
- interestingly the lighter supraorbital area clearly is white in all pictures of the bird; allthough all 3 observers registerd it as light brown during the first observations and as white only after the bird had been resting.

I am really astonished how all 3 observers, me included, were so mistaken about the true colour of this supraorbital area.
 
What do you suppose caused the illusion-- or change? Surely not the preening: a bird cannot preen its eyebrow, can it? The lighting? The angle of the head? I can envision looking down the shank of those tiny feathers when the head is at an angle, and not seeing the immaculate white reflection, but a penumbrous brown...
 
As I said, that supraorbital area did not look as dark as the rest of the brown on the head; but it also did look darker than the pure white area above the bill.

I´d guess at an optical illusion due to very strong, blinding light and also reflection from the water surface in the background; that the white area was much narrower than in most other Common ringed plovers I have seen has probably added to this effect. That the supraorbital area looked white later to all 3 of us might be caused by the lower angle of the sun then.

I am still waiting for the digital photos of the other photographer, I wonder how it looks on those,
but
this shows to me that even a good drawing may be wrong in an important detail; and I´ll be even more carefull with I.D. s from my sketches in the future
 
Beautiful sketches nevertheless, Jörn. I can't draw a bird with two circles and a beak (or bill).

By the way, your comment does bring to mind that-- absolutely no reference to the current bird!-- one can in theory sketch almost anything one thinks one sees or wants to see, so I have never really understood how drawings could be used as proof (or rather, corroboration) of anything. For the serious student of course they are an aid to concentration and accurate observation, but in the hands of the unscrupulous....
 
Absolutely!

But the same thing goes for written descriptions... It is easy to see what one would like to see and then adjusting the reality to ones wishes.
photographs are probably the best evidence one can get; allthough I have seen enough dodgy photos to see that even those ...

Still it would be nice if I could afford a good digital camera; but I even couldn´t decide to by the scope I want yet as it really stretches my limits.

I am still thinking if it could be a C. hiaticula tundrae- to me it was darker than a Little ringed plover and not a very big bird...hope I get digital photos from the guy with the digital camera we met there; but maybe we´ll nevver find out...
 
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