Species: Charadrius alexandrinus nivosus

Western Snowy Plover

Species

Encyclopedia of Puget Sound

A pale plover with a sand-colored dorsum, white venter, thin dark bill, dark or grayish feet and legs, and (in adults) a partial breast band and dark ear patch (females may lack the black areas in the plumage); immatures have light edges on dorsal body feathers, resulting in a scaly pattern (NGS 1983, Peterson 1990).

Classification

Kingdom

Animalia

Phylum

Craniata

Class

Aves

Order

Charadriiformes

Family

Charadriidae

Genus

Charadrius

NatureServe

Source:
ELEMENT_GLOBAL.2.100393

Classification

Informal Taxonomy

Animals, Vertebrates - Birds - Shorebirds

Formal Taxonomy

Animalia - Craniata - Aves - Charadriiformes - Charadriidae - Charadrius

Ecology and Life History

Short General Description

A small shorebird.

Migration

true - true - true - See record for C. ALEXANDRINUS.

Non-migrant

true

Locally Migrant

true

Food Comments

Eats insects, small crustaceans, and other minute invertebrates (Terres 1980). Picks food items from substrate, probes in sand or mud in or near shallow water, sometimes uses foot to stir up prey in shallow water.

Reproduction Comments

Clutch initiation in northern Utah ranged from mid-April to mid-July (Paton and Edwards 1991, 1992). Clutch size usually is 3. Incubation lasts 24 days, by both sexes. Young are tended by both sexes (or male only), leave nest soon after hatching, fly at 22-31 days. Double brooding commonly occurs in California; female abandons first mate and brood within a few days of hatching and renests with new mate. May nest in loose colony (maximum of 3.3 nests/ha in California). In northern Utah, nest spacing was clumped at certain sites, rather than widely dispersed as has been reported for eastern California (Paton and Edwards 1991).

Ecology Comments

Nonbreeding: usually solitary or in twos, though may form pre-migratory flocks of hundreds in some areas (Paton et al. 1992). <br><br>Mean annual survival rate was at least 69% (range 58-88%) for a migratory population at the Great Salt Lake, minimally 75% for a mixed migratory-resident population in coastal California, 66% for a migratory population in North Dakota (see Paton 1994). Predation by gulls, common raven, red fox, skunk, raccoon, and/or coyote may result in a high rate of clutch loss in some areas (Page et al. 1983, 1985; Paton and Edwards 1991, 1992).

Length

Weight

Conservation Status

NatureServe Global Status Rank

G4T3

Global Status Last Reviewed

2000-06-02

Global Status Last Changed

2000-06-02

Other Status

PS:LT - The status review has been completed and based on this review, the USFWS found that (1) the Pacific Coast population constitutes a valid DPS, which is both discrete and significant under our DPS policy, (2) delisting of the Pacific Coast population is not warranted due to continued existence of threats to the DPS and its habitat, and (3) the DPS should remain classified as threatened (Federal Register 2006 April 21).

Distribution

Conservation Status Map

Global Range

H - >2,500,000 square km (greater than 1,000,000 square miles) - H - BREEDING: along Pacific coast north to Washington (most numerous from San Francisco Bay south), south to Oaxaca, and locally (but in larger numbers) inland from Oregon and California (especially the San Joaquin Valley, Mojave Desert, and Salton Sea regions) east to Kansas and Texas and south to southeastern California, southern Arizona, southern New Mexico, and north-central Texas, with the largest concentration around the Great Salt Lake, Utah. NON-BREEDING: islands and on coast from Oregon south to Guatemala; Gulf of Mexico from southern Texas to Mississippi (Page et al. 1995).

Global Range Code

Global Range Description

>2,500,000 square km (greater than 1,000,000 square miles)

ELEMENT_GLOBAL.2.100393