Chick calls within bird species vary greatly, often in relation to whether parents are present. We studied chick calls in a nidifugous shorebird, the Kentish Plover Anarhynchus alexandrinus , in three circumstances—(1) on the nest with parental presence; (2) on the nest with parental absence; and (3) out‐of‐nest with human observer presence—and categorized their calls into five types. Call types V2 and Z occurred more during parental absence, whereas call type Z predominated out‐of‐nest when chicks were exposed to a human observer, with different call qualities among the circumstances. Our findings demonstrate a posteriori that Kentish Plover chicks modify both call types and qualities according to their situations, and further provide foundational knowledge on parent–offspring vocal communications in Charadriiformes.
Lee et al. (Thu,) studied this question.