(c) Heather Forcier
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The swift-flying American Golden-Plover, beautifully clad with brown and gold-speckled plumage, is a champion long-distance migrant. This medium-sized shorebird shows up every spring in the pastures, fields, and prairies of the continent's heartland, where it feasts on a profusion of insects to fortify itself during its northbound journey.
Weighing about five ounces, with a head-to-tail length of 10 ˝ inches, and a wingspan of more than two feet, the adult American Golden-Plover has a grayish brown, yellow-flecked crown, nape, and back. Its underside is mostly grayish brown, with and the undersides of the wings being are gray. Non-breeding birds have white eye patches. Breeders have a continuous white band, which runs over the brown eyes, across the forehead, and down the sides of the neck, widening as it meets the wings, where it ends. Breeding females are more muted in color than the males. The plover's bill is black, and its legs range from gray to black.
American Golden-Plovers spend summers in their breeding grounds in western Alaska, across northern Canada to Baffin Island, and southward to northern British Columbia, Manitoba, and Ontario. They also breed in easternmost Siberia. In winter, the birds primarily inhabit the vast Rio de la Plata grasslands of Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil.
The American Golden-Plover's breeding habitat consists of the dry, open arctic and subarctic tundras of North America and Asia, particularly areas with sparsely vegetated rocky slopes. The birds winter thousands of miles away in the grazed grasslands of South America, but also in coastal wetlands. During migration, they are found in short-grass prairies, pastures, tilled farmland, golf courses, airports, mudflats, shorelines, estuaries, and beaches.
The American Golden-Plover forages in open areas and short vegetation, using a repeated sequence of running a few steps, stopping to look for prey, and running again. Its diet consists mostly of a variety of insects captured by pecking, including flies, beetles, and grasshoppers. Berries are an important food source when insects are not available. The birds also consume snails and seeds, as well as small crustaceans and mollusks found along shorelines.
Male American Golden-Plovers stake out their breeding territory with distinctive flight displays that may also serve to attract mates. The birds also engage in numerous displays during courtship and pair bonding. Four well-camouflaged eggs vary in color from whitish to cinnamon buff, creamy buff, greenish buff, or ivory yellow; heavily marked (especially near large end) with irregular splotches and spots of dark brown and black, with a few underlying spots of gray. Eggs are laid in a shallow depression scraped into the ground, which is lined with lichen and sometimes leaves and grass. Both sexes defend nest sites, incubate the eggs, and care for offspring. Incubation lasts about 26 days, with males sitting on the clutch by day, and females at night. Parents protect the chicks and lead them to foraging areas, but within a few hours of hatching, the young are able to find their own food. They fledge at 22 to 24 days.
The American Golden-Plover has one of the longest migrations in the world. Each fall, the birds fly offshore from the east coast of North America, and travel nonstop over the Atlantic Ocean to South America. Individuals may go more than 3,000 miles without pause, at speeds of 65 to more than 100 miles per hour. Juveniles often move southward through the river valleys of Missouri, Mississippi, and Ohio, or hug coastlines and island-hop to wintering grounds. In spring, most birds pass through the middle of North America to reach their breeding grounds.
Johnson, O. W., and P. G. Connors. 1996. American Golden-Plover (Pluvialis dominica), Pacific Golden-Plover (Pluvialis fulva). In
The Birds of North America, No. 201–202 (A. Poole and F. Gill, eds.). The Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, and tThe American Ornithologists' Union, Washington, D.C.
Kaufman, Kenn.
Lives of North American Birds, Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, 1996.
Sibley, David Allen.
The Sibley Guide to Birds. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2000.
