This plover ranges from Mexico through Central America to central Argentina and central Chile. Adults have a black breast band.
Adults have a short, slender black bill and pink legs, with a brown-gray back, white forehead, throat and belly, and a black breast band. The crown and nape are cinnamon-colored, and the account also describes a black line in front of the eye.
Outside the breeding season it uses intertidal ground at low tide and nearby stony or short-grass beaches at high tide. Food includes beetles, dragonflies, fly larvae, ants, polychaete worms, small crustaceans and snails.
In the 2008–2013 Sinú estuary study in Colombia, nests were found in shallow ground hollows on the Bongo floodplain. Cattle dung and dry grass lay around three cream eggs heavily marked with dark brown spots.
At a Sinú estuary nest in 2012, the male and female took turns incubating. In 2011 both parents attended a downy chick, and one performed a broken-wing display with repeated alarm calls.
Juveniles have a diffuse or incomplete breast band.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.