Ringed Plover (Photo By Charles J. Sharp – Own work, from Sharp Photography, sharpphotography.co.uk, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=134506685)

Dear Readers, you may have been amazed by the behaviour of Bower Birds, who are often the stalwarts of nature documentaries. This family of birds lives in Australia and Papua New Guinea, and they are expert creators of ‘bowers’, where they perform dances in order to entice females. Some of the bowers are quite simple, but some of them are very highly decorated, often with items of a particular colour (blue seems to be a favourite).

Regent Bowerbird arranging its bower (Photo By Bowerbirdaus – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=87379919)

Female birds come and inspect the bower, and if it meets with their approval they may allow the male to mate.

Well, in the UK we have a small wading bird, the Ringed Plover, who displays a similar-ish behaviour. In this case, it’s the nest site is decorated with broken shells before any eggs are laid. Although this behaviour is well-known by ornithologists and conservationists (who use the shells as a visual cue for where the birds are nesting), nobody really knows why the birds do this.

Ringed Plover nest with fragments of shell, Photo Liam Andrews from https://britishbirds.co.uk/journal/article/ringed-plover-using-flakes-white-paint-nest-decoration

However, in this month’s British Birds magazine, Liam Andrews has noticed that a nest on the edge of an airstrip on the Out Skerries in Scotland was decorated with white flakes of paint, scraped from a concrete post twenty metres away which had peeling paint – the area had no seashells, so the bird seems to have reached for a substitute.

Ringed Plover nest with white paint flakes (Photo by Liam Andrews https://britishbirds.co.uk/journal/article/ringed-plover-using-flakes-white-paint-nest-decoration)

So, clearly this little bird is so motivated by the need to decorate the nest that it will seek out white scraps even when there are no seashells available. But why? It may be that the female prefers a few spots of white when choosing a nest site. It might be that the white spots mimic droppings and give some indication that a bird is already nesting, and so it’s safe. Whatever the reason, I would have thought that it made the nest site more visible from the sky, and that would be a worry, although the chicks are extremely well camouflaged, and are able to run about from the moment they hatch if danger strikes.

Ringed Plover chick in Iceland (Photo By Steinninn – Own work, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=150377797)

Ringed Plovers also have an impressive tactic for dealing with predators – like many of their relatives, they will run away from the nest while dragging a wing so that it looks as if they’re injured. When they’ve lured the predator away from the nest they’ll take to the wing.

For once, the Ringed Plover is not on the Red List, but it is threatened by human/dog disturbance near its nesting sites – for many wading, ground-nesting birds even the sight of a dog on a lead can be enough to startle them from the nest, let alone a dog that’s running free. I love dogs, but I do think that at least some of these nesting sites should be off limits to humans and dogs when it’s breeding season. Surely that’s not too much to ask?

Ringed Plover By Richard Crossley – The Crossley ID Guide Britain and Ireland, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29316243