Figure 113. Spring vagrants (9 April–29 June) account for seven of California’s nine Wilson’s Plovers. The exceptions refer to a first-fall bird that lingered into January in Moss Landing, Monterey County, and to this first-fall individual, photographed on 11 August 1992 in Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara County (1992-212; Shawneen E. Finnegan).

 

 

 

 

 

WILSON’S PLOVER Charadrius wilsonia Ord, 1814

Accepted: 9 (53%)	Treated in Appendix H: yes
Not accepted: 8	CBRC review: all records
Not submitted/reviewed: 6	Color image: page H-17

This plover patrols beaches and coastal mudflats along the Atlantic coast from Virginia south through most of Middle America and the West Indies to northern South America. The range also takes in the Pacific coast of Middle America, including most of the Baja California Peninsula. Although this plover regarded as a resident throughout much of its range, populations north of Florida are migratory and the species occurs only as a winter visitor in much of southern Mexico and parts south. Records of vagrants extend north to eastern Quebec on the Atlantic coast, and to the Great Lakes and Colorado inland. The species breeds north to about 28°N latitude on the Pacific coast (Wilbur 1987) and to about 31°N latitude (or possibly farther north) in the Gulf of California (Patten et al. 2001). An egg set collected in 1948 at the Salton Sea, Imperial County, represents an anomalous breeding record. Along the Pacific coast, the species has strayed north to southern Oregon (9 September to mid October 1998).

California’s first Wilson’s Plover was a year-old male present from 24 to 29 June 1894 at Pacific Beach, San Diego County, where it was collected (Ingersoll 1895). The same observer reported, but did not document, a male at Imperial Beach on 11 May 1918 behaving as if mated with an unseen, brooding female (Ingersoll 1918). Subsequent records have come from along the coast: five in spring (9 April–29 June), a first-fall bird in mid August (Figure 113), and a bird in formative plumage that lingered from 15 September 1992 to 1 January 1993 at Moss Landing in Monterey County—the state’s northernmost and latest record; see also Appendix H.

 

[COMMON RINGED PLOVER Charadrius hiaticula Linnaeus, 1758 – see hypothetical section]