The Semipalmated Plover is a small shorebird with a dark band across the chest. It migrates from North American breeding grounds toward South America.
It has brown upperparts, white underparts, and a single dark band across the chest.
Researchers fitted southbound shorebirds with VHF radio tags at James Bay, Ontario, from 2014 to 2017 and tracked detections at automated receiver stations. They tagged 15 adult and 52 juvenile Semipalmated Plovers, a short-distance migrant that travels about 5,000 km from subarctic breeding areas.
Adult Semipalmated Plovers stayed at James Bay for an average of 5.9 ± 3.0 days. In the same study, adult Semipalmated Sandpipers stayed 14.4 days and White-rumped Sandpipers 21.4 days, making the plovers’ stopover the shortest of the three species. Across all six study species, 610 birds were tagged and 497 were detected at least once.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.
All 15 tagged adult plovers were detected at least once, and departures were confirmed for 13. Among juveniles, 45 of 52 were detected and departures were confirmed for 31.