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Eurasian Dotterel

Eurasian Dotterel

Eudromias morinellus

Identify the Eurasian Dotterel by sound or photo and log your sightings with Birdpass.

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The Eurasian Dotterel is a small, compact plover of open tundra and high mountain plateaus, easily picked out by its bold white eyebrow and, in summer, a rusty-orange chest with a dark belly. It breeds across northern Eurasia and on scattered mountain plateaus further south, and winters in the semi-deserts of North Africa and the Middle East. Unusually among waders, females are the brighter sex, while males incubate the eggs and rear the chicks.

Did you know?

  • Females are more colourful than males and compete for mates, while males do the incubating and chick-rearing.
  • Its name “dotterel” once meant “simpleton”, reflecting how tame the bird is.

About the species

Identification

A smallish, neat wader with a short bill and yellowish legs. A broad white supercilium, meeting on the nape, frames the dark crown; the throat is pale. In breeding plumage the breast and belly are warm rufous, with a clear white band across the upper breast and a dark belly patch; winter plumage is duller, without the dark belly. Told from Golden Plover by its white supercilium and breast band and daintier build; Golden Plover is larger with golden-spangled upperparts.

Family

Charadriidae

Size

Medium (thrush)

Colours

brown, grey, orange, white, black

About the habitat

Breeds on open, stony arctic tundra and high alpine fellfields with short vegetation. Winters in a narrow belt of semi-desert from North Africa to Iran; on migration uses open fields, heaths and other flat, bare ground.

Diet

Mainly insects and other small invertebrates – beetles, flies, ants, worms, spiders and small snails – and occasionally berries, taken with a run-and-pause technique rather than probing.

Behaviour

A migrant that often travels in small parties, using traditional inland stopover sites. It is famously tame and approachable. Sex roles are reversed: females court the males, and the male incubates the eggs in a bare ground scrape and cares for the chicks.

Sources

Photo: Oscar Hopgood, CC BY 4.0 https://www.gbif.org/occurrence/6320486309

Text: Wikipedia (English) + FinBIF species descriptions, CC BY-SA 4.0; FinBIF: CC BY 4.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_dotterel

See also