Shore Plover

The shore plover is about 20 cm long, brown above and white below, with a black (male) or brown (female) mask; the brown back feathers have narrow pale fringes, giving a scaly appearance at close range. There is a distinctive white strip circling its head below its brown skullcap. Its legs are bright orange-red, and the bill orange-red (brighter in males than females) with a sharply defined dark tip. The wings are brown with a narrow white wingbar along the full length, and the tail brown with white sides. Juveniles differ in lacking the full dark face mask, and having the brown back feathers with broader pale fringes, giving a more strongly scaly appearance above.

Although this species was historically found only on the New Zealand coast, subfossil shore plover bones have been recovered from roosts of the extinct laughing owl near rivers many kilometres inland. Cook's second expedition collected them from opposite ends of the South Island, in Fiordland and the Marlborough Sounds. There are 19th century reports of shore plovers from the South Island and several parts of the North Island, but by the 1870s they had vanished from the mainland, surviving only on the Chatham Islands. Introduced predators such as feral cats and brown rats were the main culprits in their decline. In 2026 the Shore Plover Recovery Group confirmed that a chick had fledged on Pitt Island, the first time this has occurred in 150 years.