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Greater Sand Plover

Greater Sand Plover

Anarhynchus leschenaultii

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The Greater Sand Plover is a chunky, long-legged plover of about 19–22 cm with a heavy black bill and greenish-yellow legs. It breeds on bare semi-desert from Turkey across Central Asia and winters on sandy coasts in East Africa, South Asia and Australasia. It is a rare vagrant to western and northern Europe, where lone birds can be hard to tell from the similar Siberian and Tibetan Sand Plovers.

Did you know?

  • Its scientific name honours the French botanist Jean Baptiste Leschenault de la Tour.
  • It feeds with a quick run-and-pause routine rather than steady probing.

About the species

Identification

A medium-sized plover with long greenish-yellow legs and a relatively thick black bill; upperparts sandy and underparts white. Breeding males show orange tones on the forehead, nape and breast band and a dark eye mask; females and non-breeding birds are duller. Compared with Siberian and Tibetan Sand Plovers it tends to look bulkier with longer legs and a heavier bill, but lone vagrants need careful study.

Family

Charadriidae

Size

Medium (thrush)

Colours

brown, white, orange, black

About the habitat

Breeds on open semi-desert and steppe with sparse vegetation; outside the breeding season on sandy beaches, coastal mudflats and lagoons.

Diet

Insects, small crustaceans and worms, taken by sprinting, pausing and picking prey from the surface.

Behaviour

A strongly migratory plover that nests in a shallow scrape on bare ground and forages with a run-and-pause gait rather than steady probing. Its flight call is a soft trill.

Sources

Photo: MPF, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2024-07-26 Anarhynchus leschenaultii leschenaultii, Newbiggin, Northumberland 1.jpg

Text: Wikipedia (English) + GBIF regional observations + Wikipedia (English), CC BY-SA 4.0; GBIF occurrence data; Wikipedia: CC BY-SA 4.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_sand_plover

See also