Sand plover id help please? Cape Coral, Phangnga, Thailand, Apr 8, 2025 (1 Viewer)

[bhutjoe]

Attached are photos of 3, I believe, different sand plovers in breeding plumage. The greatly appreciated comments of John A and others on previous photos have made me want to delve deeper into these, but admittedly without great success.
I have been reading articles in Research Gate, Singapore Birds, Robson's birds of SE Asia and Brazil's Birds of East Asia as well as eBird etc to try and understand further - and of course I identify each plover of the most uncommon possible - reading not being the same as understanding.
As to the 3 groups of photos:
Group 1: 24... series: plover with a white spotlights over its eyes separated by a (thick?) line. Is it a Siberian, s. race possibly? In favour are the white forehead spots and the size of the line separating them #2140, the brick red/dark red colour of the breast band and I think a dark line at the top of the breast band - 2143, though sees not to show in other photos. Common redshank in 2142 and Tibetan in2143?
Group 2: # 2139: Greater Sand Plover? long tibia and bill? Terek sandpiper behind?
Group 3: #213d: Tibetan Sand Plover based on short tibia, red-orange breast band.
Are any of these correct?
All comments and corrections greatly appreciated.
thank you in advance
steve

 

[johnallcock]

The sand plovers are all Greater. The most obvious reason here is the well-defined, narrow orange breast band - on breeding plumage Siberian and Tibetan the breast band is much broader than this on the breast and flanks, fading more gradually into the white of the belly. Photo _213d shows the broadest breast band here, but even this is less extensive than on Siberian/Tibetan. I suspect the apparent colours are slightly affected by light conditions, with strong light and shadows emphasising the contrast and making the breast band look dark, but they still have the orange tone of Greater/Tibetan, not the pinker tone of Siberian.

Note that you can see the bill structure quite well on some birds (especially _2139 and _213d), which shows the bills to be fairly long and with a sharply pointed tip, as expected on Greater.

The birds in the background are Terek Sandpiper (_2142 & _2139) and a non-breeding Greater Sandplover (_2143: note the long, pointed bill and long legs).

 

[bhutjoe]

Thank you once again John, very much appreciated. The practicing continues.
steve