PLOVER, the general name employed to designate most birds of the limicoline family Charadrids, of which the true plovers are sometimes held to constitute the subfamily Charadrince, and to that extent are separated from the turnstones and surf-birds (qq.v.). Closely related are the sandpipers and snipes (qq.v.). The plovers have a short or mod erate bill, never exceeding the head, soft basally, but horny, somewhat enlarged and usually slightly hooked at the end. The legs are comparatively short and, with only a few exceptions, have no hallux, and the three remaining toes are not much lengthened. Tice body is full and plump, the neck short and thick and the head large. The long pointed wings reach to the tip of the short, 12-quilled tail. Plovers are small or moderate sized birds, remarkable for their ex tensive migrations and found along the sea shore or in plains and fields. They are strictly ground birds and with few exceptions lay four speckled pyriform eggs in a slight depression in the ground. About 75 species are known from all parts of the world, some of the exotic ones exhibiting remarkable modifications. With in the limits of North America there occur three genera and 13 species, all closely related. The most distinct of these is the lapwing (Vanellus vanellus), known by its crested head and long overlapping wines, a rare straggler from Europe which scarcely belongs to our fauna. To the genus Charadrius belong the black-bellied or bull plover (C. squatarota) and the golden plovers (C. dominicus), et al. The former is nearly i foot long, and in the breeding plumage has the under parts largely black, but in the autumnal plumage, as usually seen in the United States, the black is limited chiefly to the axillary region. This plover may
be distinguished at once from any closely re lated American species by the presence of a distinct hind toe. It breeds in the far north sparingly as far south as Minnesota, and under takes the most stupendous migrations, reaching South American on our side and South Africa, Australia and Tasmania on the other. It mi grates in flocks both coastwise and in the interior; and is equally common in this country and Europe where it is called the gray The American golden plover (C. dominicus), also known to gunners as the field plover and bull-head plover, is only slightly smaller than i the last, from which it is easily distinguished by the absence of a hind toe and the paler finely mottled plumage, the upper parts of which have much golden-yellow in summer. This species breeds in Arctic America and winters as far south as Patagonia, passing through the United States as a transient in the spring and again from August to November. At the latter sea son their numbers are augmented by the young of the year; and they migrate in great flocks or waves which often linger for several weeks in neighborhoods where food is abundant. Consult Elliot, American Shore Birds' New York 1895) ; Sands and Van Dyke, Upland Game Birds' (New York 1902) ; Murphy, (American Game Bird Shooting' (New York 1882) ; besides the standard works on ornithology.