Animal Diversity Web

Ge­o­graphic Range

Within the U.S the Pip­ing Plover is found along the At­lantic Coast in such states as Florida, New York, New Jer­sey, Mass­a­chu­setts, Maine, Rhode Is­land, Con­necti­cut, New Eng­land, Delaware, Mary­land, Vir­ginia, South Car­olina, and North Car­olina. Out­side of the U.S, the Plover can be mainly found along the At­lantic coast of Canada, and in some of the British Caribbean Is­lands.

• Biogeographic Regions
• nearctic
  • native
• oceanic islands
  • native
• atlantic ocean
  • native

Habi­tat

Charadrius melo­dus usu­ally nest above the high tide line on coastal beaches, sand flats at the ends of sand­pits and bar­rier is­lands, gen­tly slop­ing fore dunes, blowout areas be­hind pri­mary dunes, sparsely veg­e­tated dunes, and wash over areas cut into or be­tween dunes. Feed­ing areas in­clude in­ter-tidal por­tions of ocean beaches, wash over areas, mud­flats, sand flats, wrack lines, and shore­lines of coastal ponds, la­goons or salt marshes. Win­ter­ing plovers on the At­lantic Coast are gen­er­ally found at ac­cret­ing ends of bar­rier is­lands, along sandy penin­su­las, and near coastal in­lets.

• Terrestrial Biomes
• savanna or grassland

• Aquatic Biomes
• coastal

Phys­i­cal De­scrip­tion

The pip­ing plover is a small Nearc­tic shore­bird ap­prox­i­mately 17 cen­time­ters (7 inches) long with a wing­spread of about 38 cm (15 in. Wilcox (1959) found that breed­ing fe­males were slightly heav­ier than males (55.6 grams vs. 54.9 g), had slightly shorter tail lengths (50.5 mil­lime­ters vs. 51.3 mm), but had sim­i­lar wing lengths. Breed­ing birds have white un­der­parts, light beige back and crown, white rump, and black upper tail with a white edge. In flight, each wing shows a sin­gle, white wing stripe with black high­lights at the wrist joints and along the trail­ing edges. In win­ter, the birds lose the black bands, the legs fade from or­ange to pale yel­low, and the bill be­comes mostly black. Breed­ing plumage char­ac­ter­is­tics are a sin­gle black breast­band, which is often in­com­plete, and a black bar across the fore­head. The black breast­band and brow bar are gen­er­ally more pro­nounced in breed­ing males than fe­males. The legs and bill are or­ange in sum­mer, with a black tip on the bill.

(Stout 1967)

• Other Physical Features
• endothermic
• bilateral symmetry

• Range mass

  55.6 to 59.4 g

  1.96 to 2.09 oz

• Average mass

  57 g

  2.01 oz

Re­pro­duc­tion

The Pip­ing Plover uses (like most birds) a courtship dance to at­tract a mate for cop­u­la­tion. Courtship dis­plays are also var­ied. The most vis­i­ble dis­play is the courtship flight, in which the male plover loops through the air, con­stantly peep­ing, often swoop­ing very close to the ground near the lo­ca­tion of the fe­male being courted. Once a male and fe­male are more tightly "pair-bonded," courtship dis­plays may lead to mat­ing. Nest scrapes are dug in the sand within the pair's ter­ri­tory, and these sites are often the focal point of courtship dis­plays. These scrapes are sim­ply shal­low de­pres­sions in the sand, oc­ca­sion­ally lined with bits of seashells. If the fe­male ap­proaches the male while he is dig­ging or sit­ting in a scrape, he will stand over the scrape and fan out his tail. The fe­male may then squat down under his tail, in­di­cat­ing a pos­si­ble ac­cep­tance of him as a mate. At this point, the male will often ini­ti­ate a tatoo dance, in which he stands very erect, puffs out his chest, and rapidly and re­peat­edly beats the ground with his feet. Still danc­ing, he ap­proaches the fe­male until they are touch­ing, ruf­fling her feath­ers with the ry­th­mic pound­ing of his feet. If the fe­male does not back away, the male will then mount her and cop­u­la­tion oc­curs.

The eggs are layed within a nest scrape over a pe­riod of about a week, ap­prox­i­mately one egg every other day, until 4 eggs (oc­ca­sion­ally less, rarely more) are pro­duced. In­cu­ba­tion is spo­radic until around the time of the third egg, at which point it is more or less con­stant until hatch­ing oc­curs. The male and fe­male share the chore of in­cu­ba­tion, each re­main­ing on the nest for ap­prox­i­mately one-half to one hour while the other is off feed­ing. Ap­prox­i­mately 28 days after in­cu­ba­tion com­mences, the eggs will hatch and the young chicks emerge.

• Key Reproductive Features
• iteroparous
• gonochoric/gonochoristic/dioecious (sexes separate)
• sexual
• oviparous

• Average eggs per season

  4

  AnAge

• Average time to hatching

  28 days

  AnAge

Lifes­pan/Longevity

• Average lifespan
  Status: wild

  168 months

  Bird Banding Laboratory

Be­hav­ior

Ter­ri­to­r­ial and ag­o­nis­tic in­ter­ac­tions have been ob­served with other Pip­ing Plovers and si­m­il­iar­ized Plover species-Semi­pala­mated and Snowy Plovers (John­son and Bal­das­sarre 1988, Zon­ick and Ryan 1993). In Al­abama, com­bined time spent in ter­ri­to­r­ial and ag­o­nis­tic ac­tiv­i­ties largely in­volved in­traspe­cific in­ter­ac­tions (John­son and Bal­das­sarre 1988). Pip­ing plovers ap­pear to be ag­gres­sive and may de­fend food and mat­ing patches dur­ing the win­ter pe­riod (Zon­ick and Ryan 1993).

• Key Behaviors
• flies
• motile

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Per­cep­tion

• Perception Channels
• visual
• tactile
• acoustic
• chemical

Food Habits

Chicks and adults alike feed on a va­ri­ety of beach-dwelling in­ver­te­brates, in­clud­ing in­sects, small crus­taceans mol­lusks, , ma­rine worms, fly lar­vae, and bee­tles. Be­cause of their rel­a­tively short beaks, they rely mainly on sur­face-dwelling or­gan­isms or those which live just below the sand sur­face, for food.

Eco­nomic Im­por­tance for Hu­mans: Pos­i­tive

The Pip­ing Plover is an in­di­ca­tor species that al­lows sci­en­tists to get a glimpse of the con­di­tion of an ecosys­tem. The Pip­ing Plover also con­trols the in­sect and small crus­tacean pop­u­la­tions on beaches. The major eco­nomic ben­e­fits stem from this beach clean­ing the Pip­ing Plover pro­vides. This in turn al­lows for hu­mans to fre­quent coastal areas more fre­quently with less in­ci­dent for con­tact with pests (tourism).

Eco­nomic Im­por­tance for Hu­mans: Neg­a­tive

The Pip­ing Plover has no neg­a­tive ef­fects on hu­mans.

Con­ser­va­tion Sta­tus

Pip­ing plovers are listed as vul­ner­a­ble by the IUCN, and they are con­sid­ered en­dan­gered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Ser­vice and the Michi­gan DNR. There are nu­mer­ous groups and coali­tions try­ing to pro­tect the Pip­ing Plover around the United States. For more in­for­ma­tion, see: http://​endangered.​fws.​gov/​i/​B69.​html

• IUCN Red List

  Near Threatened
  More information

• IUCN Red List

  Near Threatened
  More information

• US Migratory Bird Act

  Protected

• US Federal List

  Endangered

• CITES

  No special status

• State of Michigan List

  Endangered

Con­trib­u­tors

Ryan Vinelli (au­thor), Cocoa Beach High School, Penny Mc­don­ald (ed­i­tor), Cocoa Beach High School.

Ref­er­ences

John­son, , Bal­das­sarre. 1988. As­pects of the win­ter­ing ecol­ogy of pip­ing plovers in coastal Al­abama. Wil­son Bul­letin, 100: 214-233.

Stout, G. 1967. The shore­birds of North Amer­ica. New York: Viking Press.

Wilcox, .. 1959. A twenty year band­ing study of the pip­ing plover.

Zonik, .., .. Ryan. 1993. Ecol­ogy and con­ser­va­tion of win­ter­ing pip­ing plovers and snowy plovers. Uni­ver­sity of Mis­souri, Co­lum­bia, Mis­souri: Un­pub­lished in­terim re­port.