Art by Barry Kent MacKay
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Art and Photo Presentation

(Artwork - 012)
Plover (Charadrius melodus)

The breeding range of this charming little shorebird is restricted to parts of the interior of North America, and a section of the Atlantic coast. It is, through much of its range, endangered. It breeds on sandy beaches and these are often used by people, putting the small plovers are risk. Last summer they bred on a bit of carefully protected shoreline east of Toronto, Ontario, marking the first time in half a century that they successfully nested on the north shore of Lake Ontario. The year before they tried to nest on Toronto Island, but a massive rainstorm flooded out the nest.

They migrate to the southern U.S. Atlantic, Florida and Gulf of Mexico coasts and a little into the West Indies.

There is a lot of variation in the breast band, which is sandy-grayish in winter, black in summer, and may cross the upper breast, or be broken in the middle. Coastal nesters are less likely, on average, to have the solid-coloured black breast band.

I have shown a pair of adults with three quite young chicks.

A few years ago I painted an adult with two young birds that were fully grown, and a scan of that painting is my second attachment. Both paintings are in acrylics on compressed hardboard and are approximately life-size. The newer one was done as a cover for Ontario Birds, the journal of the Ontario Field Ornithologists.

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