Great Stone Plover at Ranganathittu Bird Sanctuary

My recent trip to Ranganathittu Bird Sanctuary has been a fruitful one in terms of photography of the birds there. The sanctuary has good boating facilities. We visited on a festival day and the there was hardly any crowd. It was easy to get a boat for for good 40mins. We halted for long stretches of times near the nesting birds.

Great Stone Plover

For today’s post I have Stone Plover. I was capturing it with zoom lens, yet the alert bird got cautious. It is a resident bird of the sanctuary and not migratory. Nocturnal by nature, it is seen sometimes during day time too in search of food for its chicks.

Notice the beak? Almost 7cm and slightly upturned. The long legs were hidden behind the rock. Their yellow eyes are the most attractive. I didn’t hear it make any sound, it is believed to communicate with wailing whistles at night. It mostly preys around for crabs, large insects and other small animals.

Plovers are odd-looking wader with a dark mask, pale eyes, and a large heavy bill. When in flight they reveal black-and-white wingtips resembling those of Lapwings.

Stone Plover

They are not huge, may be just about the size of a big hen. The legs, I read later, end in three forward-pointing toes, on which it can run quite fast.

Other names for the bird are: Great Stone-Curlew, Great Stone Curlew, Great Stone Curlew, Great-billed Thick-knee, Great Stone Plover, Great Stone-Plover, Great Stone Plover, Oriental Thick-knee.

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