From Opus

Pluvialis fulva

Breeding Adult
Photo by Doug Greenberg
Kualoa Park, Oahu, Hawaii, April 2004

[edit] Identification

21-25cm Breeding Adult

• Upperparts, crown and hind neck are blackish strongly spotted with gold
• A white band across forehead, supercilium and sides of neck
• Black underparts
• Dark grey legs
• Black bill
  

Non-breeding

• Loses black underparts
• Less gold upperparts

Juvenile: resembles winter adult but has an almost white forehead and supercilium. The flanks are chevroned with dusky-yellow but belly and vent are whitish.

Juvenile
Photo by James Wang
Shanghai, China, August 2003

[edit] Similar Species

Eurasian Golden-Plover:
American Golden-Plover: Pacific Golden-Plover is bit lighter and "golder" overall. Has same white at forehead but not quite as thick, white runs down along sides, thickens at wing bend but continues along the flanks, does not abruptly stop as in the American Golden-Plover.

[edit] Distribution

Breeds in the tundra of (Siberia and western Alaska). Winters in south Asia and Australasia.

A regular vagrant to Europe, north-eastern Africa and California.

[edit] Taxonomy

Monotypic^[1]

This taxon is considered a subspecies of American Golden Plover (sensu lato) by some authors^[2]

Non-breeding Adult Photo by Karim Madoya Tg. aru KBU, Malaysia, October 2005

Photo by Neil Hong Kong, China, September 2008

[edit] Habitat

Breeds on arctic and sub-arctic tundra and in stony, gently sloping uplands.

Winters at water edges, marshlands, swamps, coastal mudflats, rice-fields, and on short-grass expanses

[edit] Behaviour

They form large flocks on their winter feeding grounds

[edit] Diet

Diet includes molluscs, worms, crustaceans, spiders. During breeding, berries, seeds and leaves are added.

They use the typical 'plover' feeding action of 'run and stop'

[edit] Breeding

They make their nest as a shallow scrape lined with lichens. Four eggs are laid, incubated by both parents (26 days). After hatching, the chicks and parents move off to moist shrubby or grassy tundra. When threatened, the parent distracts the predator from the nest or chicks by pretending to have a broken wing. Both parents raise the young, but if the brood is late, only by the male.

[edit] Vocalisation

Call: A loud tu-it or keruit or kyew-eek.

[edit] References

1. Clements, JF. 2008. The Clements Checklist of Birds of the World. 6th ed., with updates to December 2008. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press. ISBN 978-0801445019. Spreadsheet available at http://www.birds.cornell.edu/clementschecklist.
2. Avibase
3. Handbook of the Birds of the Western Palearctic
4. naturia
5. BF Member Observations

• List of references

[edit] External Links