>From: Goodfellow <>
>Hilary Thompson and I have seen a few Lesser Sand Plovers in
the Top End with intermediate-sized beaks so it's interesting to
read of the existence of a race.
>Denise
The Parks and Wildlife people up here have done some banding of
waders (yes, via cannon netting). I did some stats on the bill
measurements of the sand plovers that have been caught. There
was absolutely no overlap in the measurements of Lesser and
Greater Sand Plover. All of the Lessers up here have clearly shorter
bills and this is easy to see in the field. Those with distinctly short
bills also show other characteristics of being Lessers. This clear
dichotomy of bill size may be different from down south and east,
as I have noticed some interstate visitors getting a little disoriented
in their identifications, tending to want to label some of the shorter
billed Greaters as Lessers. Basically, only very short-billed Sand
Plovers are Lesser. Those with large bills are Greater, and those
with 'intermediate' bills are also Greater, not large billed Lesser,
and certainly not hybrids as has been one suggestion. Whether the
variation in bill size of Greater (or Lesser) Sand Plover (in Darwin at
least) is racial or not is, to all intents and purposes, beside the
point. Being able to identify the two species is the first priority.
Happy birding
Niven
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