Black-bellied plovers
Like many shorebirds, black-bellied plovers undertake long migrations and have striking annual plumage changes. This species breeds in the Arctic and many of them winter along the Pacific and Atlantic coasts. These photos show perched birds on beaches and mudflats (typical winter habitat). The running birds were also in Pacific Grove, and the other plovers were at Fort DeSoto Park, Florida (one of the Florida birds is eating a large lugworm) or San Diego, California. Most are in the relatively subdued winter plumage, but several still have varying amounts of the striking black underparts and heavily-mottled upperparts characteristic of breeding birds (all these where photographed at Coronado, California, in late August).
This page shows winter-plumage black-bellied plovers in flight.
Images copyright by Mark A. Chappell
