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 Plover A large family of shore birds, located and also the world in the ice free regions. Their sizes range from small to medium. They're often seen in flocks over ocean beaches and sand and mud flats, where they follow the backwash of waves and searching for small marine and invertebrates that form their diet.
They have strong markings of black and brown above with white below , are plumpish waders and with pigeonlike bills. In North America is the noisy kill deer, which lives in pasture lands, the black bellied and Golden plovers that are larger, which migrates as far as 2,000 mi. and nearly; and the Ruddy turnstone.
From the Old world the dotterel and European lapwing are close relatives. In this family from Africa are the crocodile birds, insectivorous plovers described to buy Herodotus as picking the teeth of crocodiles. In India , Arabia, and East Africa is the so-called crab plover , with its heron like bill and webbed toes, is so distant It's placed in a family by itself it pounds crabs and mollusks to pieces with its heavy bill. |
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