Egyptian Plover | Pluvianidae

Krokodilwachters | Pluvial egipcio

The family consists of one species, the Egyptian Plover, which lives on the sandbars of large rivers across tropical Africa. Its range runs from Senegal to Ethiopia and south to the Congo Basin and northern Angola. Its pattern is unmistakable. The crown, a broad eye-stripe, the mantle and a breast band are glossy black, set off by white supercilia. The wings are blue-grey and the underparts warm orange-buff. In flight it shows a bold black-and-white wing pattern. It runs briskly over the sand, picking up insects, worms and molluscs. Its nesting departs strikingly from that of other shorebirds. The two or three eggs are buried in a scrape in hot sand rather than sat on in the usual way. By day the parents regulate their temperature by shading them and raking sand over them. In extreme heat they soak their belly feathers in the river and drip water onto the sand to cool the clutch. Chicks too are covered with sand when danger threatens. The tale of the bird picking food from crocodiles' teeth goes back to Herodotus, but it has never been reliably documented. The species was long grouped with the coursers. It is now treated as a distinct, ancient lineage among the plover-like shorebirds, though its exact position remains uncertain.