LITTLE RINGED PLOVER
A beautiful little bird, this hansom wader is a joy. Its most distinctive feature is the yellow ring around its eyes. It also has an all-black bill and pale brown, to pinkish-grey legs to distinguish it from other plovers. Where the male has a black collar and black face markings, in the female, they are brown. These same markings are brown in both sexes during the winter.
The reference books will tell you that this bird is found on freshwater shorelines and breeds on the edges of lakes and reservoirs. The photos I took of this pair of little ringed plovers were all taken in the sand dunes of Mouda beach, on the South coast. They are a nervous bird, moving constantly, seemingly worried that someone will stand on their eggs. Their eggs are very well camouflaged in a slight scrape, as you can see from the photo. They call constantly and even pretend to be injured to draw intruders away from their nest.
