Overview
Lesser Sand-Plover: Medium-sized, chunky plover with gray upperparts, white underparts, and bright rust-brown breast band and nape. The head has gray-brown cap and thick black eyestripe broken by a white forehead. Throat is white with a black border. Bill is black and legs and feet are yellow-green.
Range and Habitat
Lesser Sand-Plover: Asian species; rare migrant on Aleutians and islands off western Alaska. Casual in summer in western and northwestern Alaska, where it has bred; accidental in eastern North America. Prefers tundra and alpine tundra for nesting; winters on coastal tidal flats, estuaries, and sandy beaches.
Topo Map:
Sandpiper-like Body
Voice Text
"kruit - kruit"
Interesting Facts
The Lesser Sand-plover was first described by Peter Simon Pallas, a German zoologist and botanist, in 1776.
It is also known as the Mongolian Plover, the Tibetan Plover, the Mongolian Sandplover, the Mongolian Dotterel, and the Mongolian sand-dotterel.
They forage using a run-and-pause technique, rather than the steady probing of some other wader groups.
A group of plovers has many collective nouns, including a "brace", "congregation", "deceit", "ponderance" and "wing" of plovers.
Bird Term Glossary
Author
Gary Owen Dick
Artist
Imran Kahn
.