Greater Sandplover

Greater Sandplover, Charadrius leschenaultii, is a small wader in the plover family of birds.

It breeds in the semi-deserts of Turkey and eastwards through central Asia. It nests in a bare ground scrape. This species is strongly migratory, wintering on sandy beaches in east Africa, south Asia and Australasia. It is a rare vagrant in western Europe, where it has been recorded as far west as Great Britain and France.

This chunky plover is long-legged and thick-billed. Breeding males have grey backs and white underparts. The breast, forehead and nape are chestnut, and there is a black eye mask. The female is duller, and winter and juvenile birds lack the chestnut, apart from a hint of rufous on the head. Legs are greenish and the bill black.

In all plumages, this species is very similar to Lesser Sandplover, Charadrius mongolus. Separating the species may be straightforward in mixed wintering flocks on an Indian beach, where the difference in size and structure is obvious; it is another thing altogether to identify a lone vagrant to western Europe, where both species are very rare. The problem is compounded in that the Middle Eastern race of Greater Sandplover is the most similar to Lesser.

The Greater Sandplover's food is insects, crustaceans and wormss, which are obtained by a run-and-pause technique, rather than the steady probing of some other wader groups.

The flight call is a soft trill.

Reference

Shorebirds by Hayman, Marchant and Prater ISBN 0-7099-2034-2