A North American plover of open ground. It runs, pauses, and searches the ground for insects.
Adults have a brown back, white underside, and two black breast bands. Chicks can leave the nest once their down dries and have one breast band.
It runs and pauses on open ground such as lawns, fields, and sandbars, searching for insects and earthworms. It nests on the ground; an adult may pretend to have a broken wing to draw a predator away from the nest or chicks.
The nest is a shallow scrape on open ground. After laying begins the birds may add pebbles, shell fragments, sticks and other material.
In North America the clutch is 4–6 eggs and incubation lasts 22–28 days. Eggs are buff with heavy blackish-brown markings.
It eats earthworms, snails, crayfish, grasshoppers, beetles and aquatic insect larvae. In fields it may follow ploughing to pick up worms and larvae brought to the surface.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.