BLACK-BELLIED PLOVERS

Above you see a medium-sized plover often seen here hanging out with Sanderling flocks on the beach and with Semipalmated Plovers at the water's edge in the mangrove pond. You know it's a plover because of the slight bulge right behind the short, thick bill's tip, and you know it's a Black-bellied Plover in winter plumage because of the combination of the heavy mottling and the white rump seen when it flies, shown in the inset. The "rump" is where the tail connects with the upper back.

Another good field mark for Black-bellied Plovers is shown at the right -- the black "armpits" -- the black patches beneath their wings

Plovers typically feed in a stop-start manner -- standing still, then running and pecking, then standing awhile, etc. They feed on many kinds of invertebrates. Our bird's big eye also is typical of plovers.

The Black-bellied Plovers I'm seeing here are always the only one of their species staying loosely associated with flocks of smaller, faster-moving shorebirds. Howell says that sometimes you see flocks of over a hundred of them, though.

Black-bellied Plovers are Pluvialis squatarola.