tags: Piping Plover, Charadrius melodus, birds, nature, Image of the Day
[Mystery bird] Piping plover, Charadrius melodus, photographed at photographed at Quintana and Bryan Beaches, Texas. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 3 September 2008 [larger view].
Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope TSN-PZ camera eyepiece 1/640s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400.
Piping Plover-could be a Snowy but the legs are orange
Piping plover!
Piping plover - a perfect match for Sibley's adult nonbreeding pic on p. 164. And I figured that out before clicking on I-don't-know-what, which took me to a Flikr page with the same image labeled accordingly....
Piping Plover
The general shape and the stubby bill in particular say plover. And the location, the sandy beach, brings back memories of small flocks these seemingly sun bleached birds running back and forth just ahead of the moving water line along the Jersey shore. But the photo was taken in Texas, so the leg color was needed to distinguish it from the Snowy Plover.
ah, the flickr page is mine (i actually have two) where i store images so they don't disappear when the original image is deleted, or the URL is changed. Joseph, the photographer, changes his images frequently on his webpage, so i save his images to one of my flickr accounts to prevent them from "flying the coop".
Sorry, folks. Can't be a piping plover. It doesn't have any bagpipes.
Piping is one very good reason for hunting a species to extinction.
"Piping is one very good reason for hunting a species to extinction."
Bob O'H you're forgetting about habitat loss. There is very little habitat left for bagpipes and the plovers (and anyone or anything else) that play them.
The orange legs pretty much shore up the piping plover id, nthing that.