Egyptian plover to feed on decaying meat lodged between the crocodiles' teeth. The identification of the trochilus with any particular plover is doubtful, as is the cleaning symbiosis itself; no known photographic evidence exists, and the written accounts are considered suspect by the biologist Thomas Howell. Egyptian plover The Egyptian plover ("Pluvianus aegyptius"), also known as the crocodile bird, is a wader, the only member of the genus "Pluvianus". Formerly placed in the pratincole and courser family, Glareolidae, it is now regarded as the sole member of its own monotypic family Pluvianidae. The species is one of several plovers doubtfully associated with
Little ringed plover by sight. They eat insects and worms. Three subspecies recognized. The little ringed plover is one of the species to which the "Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds" (AEWA) applies. Little ringed plover The little ringed plover ("Charadrius dubius") is a small plover. The genus name "Charadrius" is a Late Latin word for a yellowish bird mentioned in the fourth-century Vulgate. It derives from Ancient Greek "kharadrios" a bird found in river valleys ("kharadra", "ravine"). The specific "dubius" is Latin for doubtful, since Sonnerat, writing in 1776, thought this bird might be just a variant of common ringed