Murph Birder: Common Ringed-Plover in Illinois

On Wednesday, September 14, while I was at work, I received a text from my friend Joe Phipps about a rare vagrant to the continental United States. A Common Ringed-Plover had been found the previous day by Gary Soper. Joe told me the bird was found in a flooded corn field not far from where I work. I looked up the coordinates on the map, and the bird was just a little over an hour away, but I had a session with a family scheduled that evening so I could not go after work. I asked my director if I could leave for a few hours since I would be working late, and he gave me the go ahead, and I headed out to the site after lunch.

The identification of the bird was not quite nailed down yet because of its similarities to Semipalmated Plover. Common Ringed-Plover has a thicker ring around the neck than semipalmated. It has a black eye ring instead of a yellow one like the eye ring on a Semipalmated. Also, the space between the inner toes and the middle toes of the Common Ringed-Plover is not webbed, while the space between the inner and middle toes of the Semipalmated Plover is webbed. Finally, the two birds have different songs. The bird in question had a black eye ring, and a thick black band around the neck, but no one had been able to get a good photo of the space between the inner and middle toes.

While I was on my way, Matt Fraker had managed to get a recording of the bird's song, which made the identification pretty certain, and by the next day, Gary Soper had posted a killer shot of the bird's toes, showing that there was no webbing between the inner and middle toes of the bird.

When I arrived at the location of the bird, there were probably about 20 birders present. Paul Greenberg was there, and I heard someone say that it was his 400th bird in Illinois. I was able to quickly get on the bird and the Red-necked Phalarope that was also present, and I was able to take several photos of the bird.