Unless you spend a lot of time surfing websites you may not have noticed a remarkable article which appeared on the Surfbirds website a couple of months ago. Written by Peter Kennerley and Dave Bakewell, the article was titled “Malaysia’s mystery plover” and opened with the sentence: “Is it possible that a small plover, not described or illustrated in any modern literature or field guide occurs in southeast Asia?” Spread over four ‘pages’ the article went on to look in great detail at a charadrius plover that was seen in 1993/4 and then wasn’t seen again until 2006/7. Evidently an extremely scarce bird, the “White-faced Plover” (as the authors named the birds), had somehow managed to remain off the ornithological world’s radar - despite being searched for by some of the region’s most serious birders. Incredibly, though, this winter a small flock of up to 14 (peak count on 17th Feb) of these elusive and virtually unknown birds were found wintering on a tiny stretch of sandy beach in eastern Singapore - where yesterday I became one of the few people in the world to have seen one!

I’m not going to attempt to supercede Kennerley and Bakewell’s excellent and ground-breaking (authoritative, earth-shaking, remarkable etc etc) article, but suffice to say I feel amazingly privileged to have been able to see this truly enigmatic taxon. I did thanks only to Martin Kennewell, an ex-pat Brit who had found 8 “white-faced plovers” with Simon Cockayne at Changi Beach on February 8th (2008), and who’d offered to take me with him to Changi to see them again. Without him I doubt I would have got anywhere near the site as it is not open to the public and the entrance is monitored by a guard who Martin was able to talk our way past by explaining that we were “looking for a bird new to science” and that we were “collecting important scientific data” as if any of the plovers were still present “it would be the latest date recorded in Singapore” (all of which was true, and incredibly exciting for yours truly who was sat in the passenger seat with a knotted stomach, praying to the birding gods that we wouldn’t be turned away so close to such a once-in-a-lifetime birding moment). Martin’s dulcet Nottinghamshire tones seemed to do the trick as we were soon signed in and waved on our way…

The trip to the plovers is not over once you’re past the guard though. There is still a several kilometer drive to an access point to the beach, and even then you need to hope that two large metal gates are open or there’s a long walk across an area of reclaimed ground to make. Fortunately for us the gates were open (Martin is not sure they’ll be open for much longer as the reclaimed ground is ripe for development anytime soon when all access will probably be prevented), and we drove through and down towards the beach just minutes before the heaviest downpour I’ve ever been in crashed down on the car and cut visibility down to just a few metres! It was as if the sea had suddenly staring boiling, and the amount of water falling from a suddenly leaden sky was incalculable: I have never felt so “close and yet so far” as I did hoping that the storm would pass through, because if it didn’t there was no way on earth I could have had any sort of view worthy of the name - and who knows if the plovers would be found again, if the site would still be accessible the next time they came back, or even if I would ever be in Singapore at the right time again.

As suddenly as the rain began it seemed to stop, and we piled out of the car and hurried down to the beach, a long sandy bar that becomes more exposed at low tide (and, to add to the whole head-shakingly remarkable experience, is probably the last remaining area of beach on the whole island). The plovers have spent the last eight weeks or so consorting with a group of 40 or so dealbatus Kentish Plovers, small numbers of Mongolian/Lesser Sand Plovers and a large flock of Pacific Golden Plovers (as well as a long-staying Oriental Plover, and 14 Malaysian Plovers which were now down to just a pair that nest on the beach) and an initial scan caused a frown to appear on Martin’s face: the Pacifics were still there but the smaller Kentish Plovers were nowhere to be seen…

Only Martin had a scope, so while he focussed tightly in on the birds that were present I was looking at a far wider view through binoculars. The birds were still some 100 metres away, but I could see what looked like two smaller birds separated from the main group on the shore which were running quickly around on the raised sand bar itself. Even at such a distance one of the birds looked strikingly pale, while the other was obviously darker. Both looked like charadrius types though, notably smaller than the Pacific Goldens and the few Sandplovers in the background. Suddenly Martin let out a satisfied whistle and said, “Got one - a superb male. Have a look at this little beauty…”

There - through the scope - was the pale bird I’d just been looking at: a male “White-faced Plover”, probably one of the scarcest shorebirds on the planet (no-one knows of course, but it seems likely to be very rare indeed), and one of the most sought-after. Despite having read the Surfbirds article many times I was still surprised by just how different the “white-faced plover” was to the Kentish Plover (the darker bird I’d seen). Sandy-backed, long-legged, and open-faced with a complete lack of the dark lores so obvious in Kentish this really is a distinctive-looking bird. Having said that, had I seen the bird at such long-range without knowing about “white-faced plovers” would I have realised that it was potentially a new bird for science? I doubt it: I’ve seen Kentish Plovers looking startlingly pale in the Middle East where the intense sunlight and fierce reflections off the white sand make them look almost bleached, and my experience of Malaysian Plover (again a similar-looking species in some ways) is entirely limited to the pair that Martin showed me as we made our way back to the car after we left the “White-faced Plover”. And I didn’t see these very well, as just as suddenly as the rain stopped it started again - a burst of intense rain that was like being wrapped in a wet blanket, soaking every inch of us within seconds.

Thanks to the rain - which meant impossible conditions for photography - the images I took are hardly going to add anything to what is known about this mysterious species, but I’m going to treasure them anyway. In the years to come maybe the “White-faced Plover” will become just another highly-twitched shorebird that major listers add to their totals at recognised sites while “doing Asia” - but maybe not, and I’ll look back on one of the real highlights of thirty years of birding with the sense of almost disbelief and privilege that I feel as I write this! I could so easily have come to Singapore and learnt that the birds had migrated along with their close congeners the week before. Were it not for Martin I could have got within a few kilometres but got no further anyway (to say that I’m grateful to him for the effort he went to on behalf of someone he’d never even met before doesn’t quite sum up just how thankful I feel right now!).

Whatever the future brings for the species in terms of birding and science (including a proper name and a full description) in common with many of the East Asian flyway’s shorebirds the habitat it seems to prefer is highly threatened and it’s likely that its breeding grounds (wherever they are) will be also. Will one of the most unlikely discoveries of recent ornithology survive the century? I hope so, I truly hope so…

Changi Beach Bird List (new for the year underlined):
Eastern Marsh Harrier Circus spilonotus 1; Pacific Golden Plover Pluvialis fulva c)40; Kentish Plover Charadrius alexandrinus 1; WHITE-FACED PLOVER CHARADRIUS ? 1; Malaysian Plover Charadrius peronii 2; Lesser Sand Plover Charadrius mongolus 5-6; Little Tern Sterna albifrons c)40; White-winged Tern Chlidonias leucopterus 3; Eastern Yellow Wagtail Motacilla tschutschensis 1; Black-naped Oriole Oriolus chinensis 1; Black Drongo Dicrurus macrocercus 1; Zitting Cisticola Cisticola juncidis 3-4; White-rumped Munia Lonchura striata 3; Scaly-breasted Munia Lonchura punctulata c)10; Southern Black-headed Munia Lonchura atricapilla c)10