Pacific Golden-Plover

The Pacific Golden-Plover is a slim, elegant, and long-legged plover closely related to the American and European Golden-Plovers. Breeding adults show a black face and underparts sharply bordered by a broad white stripe extending along the flanks, set against richly spangled gold, black, and white upperparts.

Outside the breeding season it becomes buff-brown and mottled gold above, with pale, streaked underparts.

The species is renowned for its wide-ranging migration, wintering not only on continental coastlines but also on remote Pacific islands, including famously in Hawaii, where it is a familiar winter visitor to lawns and parks.

Key field marks

• Slim body with notably long legs and long wing projection extending past the tail
• Gold-spangled upperparts, black-and-white bordered underparts in breeding plumage
• Gray axillaries and underwing in flight, similar to American Golden-Plover
• More attenuated, longer-legged silhouette than American Golden-Plover

Similar species

• American Golden-Plover is very similar but slightly bulkier with shorter legs and a less contrasting flank pattern; ranges overlap little in the breeding season.
• European Golden-Plover shows white axillaries rather than gray.
• Black-bellied Plover is larger and bulkier with black axillaries.

Pacific Golden-Plovers breed on open Arctic tundra in western Alaska and across Siberia. They undertake long transoceanic migrations to a broad wintering range across Pacific islands (including Hawaii), coastal East and Southeast Asia, and Australia, where they favor grasslands, mudflats, golf courses, and coastal fields.

Voice

A clear, whistled chu-wheet or tu-wheet call, similar to but distinguishable from the calls of related golden-plovers with experience.

Feeding

Forages with a run-stop-peck technique on open ground, taking insects on tundra breeding grounds and insects, small crustaceans, and mollusks on coastal and grassland wintering areas.

Nesting

Nests in a shallow scrape on dry, well-drained tundra. Both parents share incubation and defend the nest with distraction displays against Arctic predators.