Hooded Plovers are a medium-sized, pale brownish-grey plover found on Australia’s coastline. They are considered endangered.
The Hooded Plover is non-migratory. Little detailed information exists about its movements within Australia. Local movements to salt lakes immediately behind beaches occur in winter in the east. In the west, they move from the coast to salt lakes some distance inland in winter. This species is also known as the Hooded Dotterel or Hoody. The genus name used to be Charadrius.
The Hooded Plover is a medium-sized, pale brownish-grey plover. It has a black head and a white nape, and the black hindneck collar extends around and forks onto the breast. The underparts are white. The iris is dark brown, with a red eye ring. The legs are pink. Males and females are similar. Juveniles look like adults, but without the black head, hindneck and front of mantle, which are sandy-brown instead. Juvenile legs are pale orange. Their average size is 21cm.
A quiet piping call and a deep ‘chook-chook’ call.
The Hooded Plover occurs on sandy beaches between Jervis Bay, New South Wales and the Eyre Peninsula, South Australia, Tasmania, Esperance, and is found as far north as Jurien Bay which is about 200km north of Perth. They are not abundant.
Habitat: Coastal, Wetland, Island, Salt Lake
In south-eastern Australia, the Hooded Plover prefers broad, flat, open sandy beaches with plenty of seaweed and backed by low sand dunes. Densities are lowest on narrow, steep beaches, where there are few or no dunes, and where human activities are most intensive. In the south-west, they also occur on inland salt lakes.
In eastern Australia, the Hooded Plover inhabits sandy ocean beaches that are exposed to the constant might of the swell. There they pick tiny invertebrates from the sand near the water’s edge, and lay their eggs in shallow scrapes in the sand, either on the upper beach or in adjacent backing sand dunes.
The Hooded Plover’s diet includes insects, sandhoppers (Orchestiasp.), small bivalves, and soldier crabs (Mictyris platycheles). They forage at all levels of the beach during all tide phases. It is most usually seen in pairs or small groups, darting about at the water’s edge as waves recede, bobbing and pecking along the shore.
The Hooded Plover excavates a shallow scrape in sand or fine gravel situated above the high-tide mark on ocean beaches or among dunes. This nest may be encircled or lined with pebbles, seaweed and other beach debris. Breeding season is from August to February and can extend to April. Typically three eggs are laid, usually two days apart. Hatching is 28 days after the final egg is laid, and the downy young leave the nest within a day or two. The incubation period is longer than that of other Australasian-breeding plovers.
