Medium small. Short bicolored bill. Feet are slightly webbed. Sexes differ.
Adults: Non-breeding: Like a dull female with no black on facial markings. The breast band may be brown and incomplete. Bill, all black. Legs, dull orange.
Male: Breeding: Forehead, white, squarish in shape, sometimes with a narrow black line at base of bill. Eyestripe, from lores to ear, black. Forecrown, black. Eyebrow, short, indistinct, white, behind eye only. Eye, dark brown. Eyering, yellow or orange and obvious. Crown, hind neck, back, rump, uppertail coverts, wing coverts, greyish-brown, greater coverts tipped white forming a wing bar with white shafts of dark brown flight feathers. A narrow collar, white, and bordered behind by black, which continues forming a narrow black breast band. Tail, brown, outmost feathers nearly all white. Throat, breast, belly, undertail coverts, underwing, white. Bill, black with orange at the base of the lower mandible. Legs, orange.
Female: Breeding: Like male but the facial markings and breast band might be brown.
Immatures: Pale fringes to feathers and dark subterminal marks give a scaly appearance. Legs, darker than adult.
Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Aruba, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada (B) (P), Cayman Islands, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, French Guiana, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica (NB), Martinique, Mexico, Montserrat, Netherlands Antilles, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Puerto Rico, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St Pierre and Miquelon (B) (P), St Vincent and The Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos Islands, Uruguay (NB), USA (B), Venezuela, Virgin Islands (British) (NB), Virgin Islands (U.S.) (NB).
Vagrant to Greenland, Portugal, Spain, United Kingdom, United States Minor Outlying Islands.
Unknown to Marshall Islands.
Population
Estimated population is 150,000 (2010).
Semipalmated Plover (Charadrius semipalmatus) [XC785374]
by Carlos Pereira from Paul da Pedreira do Cabo Da Praia, Praia da Vit\u00f3ria, Azores, Portugal (call)
Semipalmated Plover (Charadrius semipalmatus) [XC231009]
by Paul Marvin from Biolab Road, Canaveral National Seashore, Brevard County, Florida, United States (call)
Subspecies
No subspecies.
Similar Species
The dark back seperates it from Piping Plover (Charadrius melodus) and Kentish Plover (Charadrius alexandrinus) and its much smaller bill from Wilson's Plover (Charadrius wilsonia).
References
See References.