This species so closely resembles the golden plover in size and appearance, both in summer and winter, changing, like it, from black to white, and from white to black, that it seems strange to find it classed in a separate genus. But there is a slight anatomical difference in the two birds: the grey plover is provided with a rudimentary hind toe, while the golden plover has only three toes on its foot. The present species does not breed in the British Islands. Its summer home is in arctic Siberia. From August, when it begins to arrive, until the following spring it is found on our coasts every year in small flocks. It is much less common than the golden plover, and while with us is almost exclusively a bird of the seashore.
The grey plover is considered a poor bird for the table; but in Yarrell’s work it is stated that Englishmen have not always been of that opinion, that it was formerly esteemed above most birds, and that the saying, ‘a grey plover cannot please him,’ was used of a person with an excessively fastidious palate. The bird proverbial for its delicacy was probably our golden plover, which to this day is called grey plover in Ireland.
Kentish Plover.
Ægialitis cantiana.
Forehead, stripe above the eye, chin, cheeks, and under parts white; upper part of forehead, a band from the base of the bill extending through the eye, and a large spot on each side of the breast, black; head and nape light brownish red; upper plumage ash-brown; two outer tail-feathers white. Length, six inches and three-quarters. The female is without the black on the fore-crown, her neck patches are brown instead of black, and her colours duller than in the male.
This species, in appearance a small and pale-coloured ringed plover, is a summer visitor to the south-east and east coasts of England from Sussex to Yorkshire, and received its name of Kentish plover when first described, nearly a century ago, by Latham, from specimens obtained at Sandwich. Its sojourn in this country is a short one, excepting on the Sussex and Kentish coasts, where a few pairs remain to breed; but as a breeding species the bird has now been almost extirpated by the egg-collector—the soulless Philistine who is without any feeling for wild nature, and whose vulgar ambition it is to fill a cabinet with the faded shells of eggs which he can label ‘British-taken.’
The Kentish plover has a very extensive distribution in Europe, Africa, and Asia. In its habits it resembles the ringed plover, and lays its three, and sometimes four, eggs in a slight depression among the fine shingle or broken shells. The eggs are of a yellowish stone-colour, spotted and scratched with black.
Ringed Plover.
Ægialitis hiaticula.
Forehead, lores, and gorget reaching round the neck black; a band across the forehead, a stripe over each eye, broad collar, and lower parts, white; nape and upper parts hair brown; outer tail-feathers white; bill, orbits, and feet orange. Length, seven inches and three-quarters. In the female the black collar is less well defined.