Breeding Kentish Plover – Dhahran Hills

Whilst birdwatching my local ‘patch’ yesterday I can across a Kentish Plover performing a distraction display. I was fluttering about on the ground as if it had a broken wing and then running away from where I presumed it had young. I went away in the opposite direction after grabbing a single photograph of the bird and waited to see if the adult bird would come back. It immediately came back to where I had originally seen it and started calling to its chick that came out of hiding and joined the parent.

Shortly afterwards I found a second pair of breeding Kentish Plovers, this time inside the settling pond. This pair was calling loudly and I soon found three very small young chicks. A pair, possibly the same pair? bred in this same location in March this year and this is probably their second brood of the year.

There was little of note to be seen apart from the Kentish Plover with no migrants passerines at all and just one Little Ringed Plover on the settling Pond where they have bred this year. The only other interesting birds seen where two Western Cattle Egrets with the bird seen a few days ago now joined by another bird on the wet area of the spray fields.