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Kentish Plover Chicks Changed Their Calls When Parents Were Absent

Kentish plover standing on sand
Research · Behaviour

Kentish plover (Anarhynchus alexandrinus) chicks changed their vocal behaviour according to whether a parent was nearby, a South Korean study published in March 2026 found. Researchers recorded chicks both at nests and away from nests and classified their vocalisations into five call types.

The on-nest recordings covered about 49 hours, including 36.4 hours with a parent present and 8.8 hours without a parent. The researchers recorded 1,405 chick calls. Type V2 was the most frequent with 657 calls, followed by type Z with 377. Both V2 and Z were produced at higher rates when parents were absent.

Chicks shifted strongly toward type-Z calls away from parents

When chicks were recorded away from the nest in the presence of a human observer, 401 of 430 calls were type Z. Within Z calls, peak frequency was higher when parents were absent than when they were present. Calls recorded away from the nest had an even higher peak frequency and a narrower frequency bandwidth than calls recorded at the nest. The chicks therefore altered both call type and sound structure with context.

Chick calls were flexible rather than fixed

The authors interpret the patterns as evidence that chick vocalisations are flexible rather than a single general contact signal. The calls may help chicks maintain communication with parents, especially when separated from them. The authors also note that the higher frequencies and narrower bandwidth seen in higher-risk contexts could have communicative significance, but the study did not experimentally test the functions of the call types. They caution that human-observer exposure, habituation to recording equipment and age differences could not be fully disentangled.

Sources and image credit

  1. Lee, D.-Y., Miller, E. H., Lee, J.-H., Kim, W.-Y., Oh, S.-J., & Sung, H.-C. (2026). Relationships between chick vocalizations and parental absence in Kentish Plovers. Ibis. https://doi.org/10.1111/ibi.70047Primary peer-reviewed article first published 12 March 2026. The researchers classified five chick call types. Nest recordings covered 48.66 hours and contained 1,405 calls; V2 and Z calls occurred at higher rates when parents were absent, while 401 of 430 calls recorded from chicks away from the nest were type Z.

Image: Bertie Harding / Wikimedia Commons — Kentish plover (Anarhynchus alexandrinus), photographed 24 July 2022. Illustrative photograph, not one of the chicks from the South Korean study. · CC BY-SA 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ · Source

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