Charadrius forbesi
In 3 days ~90% in a week >90%
Forbes's plover (Thinornis forbesi) or Forbes's banded plover is a small wader. This plover is resident in much of west Africa, mainly on inland rivers, pools and lakes. Its nest is a scrape lined with small pebbles in rocky uplands. After breeding in the wet season, this bird moves to open grasslands, including airfields and golf courses, in the dry season. It is sometimes seen at pools or reservoirs.
This species was named for the British zoologist William Alexander Forbes. The species is monotypic: no subspecies are recognised. The adult Forbes's plover is 20 cm in length. It has long wings and a long tail, and therefore looks different from most other small plovers in flight, the exception being the closely related three-banded plover which replaces it in eastern and southern Africa and Madagascar.
The breeding adult has dark brown upperparts, and the underparts are white except for the two black breast bands, separated by a white band, which give this species its common and scientific names. The head is strikingly patterned, with a black crown, brown forehead, white supercilia extending from above the eyes to meet on the back of the neck, and...
| # | Park | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mole National Park | 🇬🇭 Ghana |
More parks will be added in future updates.
Likely
About 50% of wildlife watchers report a Forbes' Plover sighting in Mole National Park on a given day, based on 120 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 25th most-seen of the 266 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 90%, and over a week to over 90%, if each day is a fresh chance.
January–February and June
In those months about 70% of wildlife watchers report a Forbes' Plover in Mole National Park on a given day, against about 10% in December, the lowest month. Those are among Mole National Park's driest months, with about 35 mm of rain a month against 220 mm in August. May and August have too few records to rate.
Between 7 and 10 am
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Forbes' Plover sightings with a recorded time, and about 9 in 10 of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is a daytime animal.
Only Mole National Park, in our data
Mole National Park is the only park on Wallace's Line with enough records to rate Forbes' Plover sightings: about 50% of wildlife watchers there report one on a given day.
Same family: Charadriidae
The closest relatives of the Forbes' Plover that you can see in Mole National Park (family Charadriidae, Plovers and Lapwings) are African Wattled Lapwing (about 40%) and Spur-winged Lapwing (about 20%), with each one's daily chance of a sighting.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Forbes' Plover is recorded against all the birds logged in Mole National Park (120 verified sightings from 2019 to 2026), calibrated against known sighting rates. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10% because citizen-science data supports honest approximations, not decimals, and months with records from fewer than five people show "—". How it works.
