THE PLOVERS 



(Family Charadriidae) 



BY A. A. ALLEN 



ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ORNITHOLOGY, CORNELL UNIVERSITY 



WHAT ARE THE WILD WAVES SAYING? 

 Here's a fine place for plover and here are a couple of ringnecks and a sanderling. 



IF TRAVEL is an education, the plovers must be 

 a highly educated family. With their near relatives 

 the sandpipers, they hold, with one exception, all 

 records for long distance nights. The one exception is 

 the Arctic tern which nests within the Arctic circle and 

 winters within 

 the Antarctic, 

 traveling some 

 ten thousand 

 miles over the 

 sea twice a 

 year. When it 

 comes to actu- 

 ally seeing the 

 world, how- 

 ever, there is 

 no bird to com- 

 pete with the 

 golden plover. 

 This bird nests 

 on the Arctic 

 shores of Norih 

 America and 

 then flies south- 

 east to Lab- 

 r a d o r , New 

 Brunswick and Nova Scotia. The 2,500 miles of sea 

 between Nova Scotia and South America hold no fears 

 for it and a di- 

 rect flight is 

 made over the 

 Bermudas and 

 Antilles, often 

 without a stop. 

 The journey is 

 then continued 

 through Vene- 

 zuela and Bra- 

 zil to the pam- 

 pas of Argen- 

 tine. But not 

 content with 

 seeing so much 

 of the world, 

 this inveterate 

 tourist seeks a 

 different route 

 for the return 

 journey. Start- 

 ing northwest 

 from Argentine, it crosses Central America and enters 

 the United States by way of the Gulf of Mexico, travel- 

 ing up the Mississippi Valley to Manitoba and Saskatche- 

 wan and thence to its breeding ground along the Arctic 



BLACK-BELLIED PLOVER IN FALL PLUMAGE 

 They are easily distinguished from the 



shores. The two routes are fully 1,500 miles apart. 

 The western golden plovers often start from Alaska 

 for a direct flight to the Hawaiian Islands and thence to 

 the islands of the South Sea. The golden plovers that 

 nest along the Arctic shores of Europe and Asia and 



winter from 

 India to South 

 Africa, are only 

 slightly differ- 

 ent from the 

 American birds 

 and, if we in- 

 clude them, we 

 may certainly 

 claim the whole 

 world in the 

 range of this 

 r e m a r k a ble 

 bird. 



The golden 

 plover is a 

 bird somewhat 

 smaller than a 

 pigeon with 

 long pointed 

 wings. Its up- 

 per parts are spotted with golden yellow and black, and 

 its underparts are uniformly black in summer and grayish 



white in winter. 

 A white stripe 

 from the fore- 

 head down the 

 side of the 

 neck and breast 

 is conspicuous 

 in the summer 

 plumage when 

 set off against 

 the black un- 

 derparts. 



Very similar 

 to the golden 

 plover is the 

 bl ack-bellied 

 plover which 

 has a similar 

 change of 

 plumage with 

 the seasons but 

 always lacks 

 the golden yellow spots of the upper parts. It is equally 

 cosmopolitan, and, in eastern North America, at least, is 

 a more common species. Some of them pass the winter 

 as far north as North Carolina but others continue their 



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golden plover, which they resemble, by the black spot under 

 the wing. 



