Semipalmated Plover and Sanderling

This looks like beach, but it's what there is of a scorched once-marshy pond. On the Bailey Tract, Sanibel Island.

So now I've seen a Semipalmated plover. Cross it off the list. Below are what I first thought the smaller bird might be: willets. But the smaller one above is a sanderling (with shorter beak).



The key difference with willets and sanderlings (and a few more) is the beak length.
In my quest to ID the larger one, who looked like a tiny moving speck in the distant sand, I also learned that this is not a killdear, which has two rings, but a Semipalmated plover, with its distinctive beak size, single ring, and orange/yellow legs.

www.fenichel.com/birds/PloverSanderling.shtml

Photography by Fenichel © 1996-2022 Michael Fenichel

This page last updated: Tuesday, 07-Jun-2022 12:52:50 EDT