A worldwide community photographing and learning about wildlife
Charadrius veredus
The Oriental Plover is a medium-sized, elegant, long-legged plover. It has plain sandy-olive upperparts with a buff white eyebrow, a buff-grey upperbreast with white underparts. It has no clear wing-bar on the upperwing and the underwing is distinctly grey brown. When breeding, the male plumage is a cream or buff-white eyebrow, face and throat, which merge into an orange-buff upper breast cut off below by a black waistband, with white underparts below.
These little ones were spotted on the plains of Roebuck Plains Station near the Broome Bird Observatory (BBO). The location on the map is at the BBO as it was too hard trying to determine where on the map we were.
The Oriental Plover is a migratory bird that spends the Northern Hemisphere winters in Australia. "The entire population breeds in a restricted area centred on Mongolia and adjacent areas of south-eastern Siberia and north-eastern China. Little is known about the ecology of the species, so until researchers have a much greater understanding of the species, the population as a whole is vital for its long-term survival. Within Australia, two of the major staging areas are near Broome, where the vast majority of birds pass through on their arrival/departure in Australia. The maintenance of these sites would appear critical for the survival of the species." - http://www.environment.gov.au/cgi-bin/sp... Reference: Warden at BBO identifying the bird. Reference: "Field Guide to the Birds of Australia", Simpson & Day, p100-101
No Comments