Kildeer Plover

“Aegialites vociferus. Kildeer Plover. Above, grayish-brown, with an olive shade, and in high plumage a slight bronzy lustre. Rump and upper tail-coverts bright-colored, very variable in tint, from tawny or orange-brown to cinnamon-brown or chestnut. Forehead with a white band from eye to eye, more or less prolonged as a superciliary streak, and a black band above it. A white collar around hind neck, continuous with white of the throat. A black collar around back of neck, continuous with a black pectoral band. Back of the latter a black pectoral belt. Thus the fore-parts are encircled with one complete black ring, behind which is a black half-ring on breast, before which is a complete white ring. A white stripe over and behind eye; a dusky stripe below eye. Under parts entirely pure white, except the two pectoral belts. Primary quills blackish; a white space on the outer webs of the most of them, forming an oblique series, and a longer white space on their inner webs. Secondaries mostly white, but with black areas in increasing size from within outward. Long inner secondaries, or tertiaries, like the back. Tail-feathers singularly variegated; several inner pairs like the back, insensibly blackening towards ends, then lightning again, and usually with rusty tips; lateral ones gaining more and more of the bright color of the rump, with more definite black subterminal bars, and pure white tips; outermost pair mostly white, with the rufous shade, and several broken black bars. The effect of all this variegation is very striking when the pairs are displayed in flight. Bill black; eye black, with a bright ring around it; legs pale.” Eliot Coues, 1884

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