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The UK Bird Atlas

Little Ringed Plover (Thinornis dubius)Where and when to see it in the UK

Summer visitor · reporting peaks April to May · Plovers and Lapwings · BOU category A

Records to 2026-08-16 · build 2026-08-31

Little Ringed Plover (Thinornis dubius)
xulescu_g, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Peak months
Little Ringed Plover: relative reporting rate by 10 km square, September

Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2026 (grid squares, place names from OS Open Names). Northern Ireland place names: OSNI Open Data, OGL v3.0. County and country boundaries: Office for National Statistics, Open Government Licence v3.0. Coastline: Natural Earth. Bird records from the data partners listed here.

Little Ringed Plover has been recorded in 937 of the 2,971 10 km squares covering UK land (32%) in records to 2026. Summer visitor in the UK. Its strongest squares are in England, Wales and Scotland. Reporting peaks in April to May.

Conservation status: Least Concern (IUCN Red List, LC)
View on the IUCN Red List
Relative to this species' best squares (how classes are calculated)
Very high
27% or more of visits
High
8% to 27%
Moderate
2% to 8%
Low
under 2%
Surveyed, not recorded
at least 20 qualifying visits, no record
Insufficient records
too few visits to say
Lighter fill
Few visits, lower confidence
Small dot
Occasional: a single record, or out of season

Seasonality

Reporting rate by month, relative to the peak month
MonthRelative to peakShare of visitsTypical class
January 0%<1%Very high
February 0%<1%Very high
March 28%2%Low
April 100%6%Very high
May 95%6%Very high
June 73%5%High
July 93%6%Very high
August 58%4%High
September 19%1%Low
October 1%<1%Low
November 0%<1%Very high
December 0%<1%Very high

Squares with the highest reporting rate in April

SquareWhereShare of visitsClass
HZ27Shetland Islands, Scotland100%Very high
NJ27Moray, Scotland100%Very high
NK15Aberdeenshire, Scotland100%Very high
NM93Argyll and Bute, Scotland100%Very high
NO42Fife, Scotland100%Very high
NO51Fife, Scotland100%Very high
NO65Angus, Scotland100%Very high
NO88Aberdeenshire, Scotland100%Very high
NS43East Ayrshire, Scotland100%Very high
NS79Stirling, Scotland100%Very high

Spotted an error in a square? Report it and it goes into the review queue. Read the methodology for how classes, flags and sensitive-species rules work. Data to 2026.