Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Charadriiformes
key morphological traits: Migratory shore birds. Small to medium size with longer wings and shorter bills.
functional/ecological fun facts: In the tips of their bills they have lots of corpuscles of Herbst that make them very sensitive allowing them to locate buried prey.
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves (birds)
Order: Charadriiformes
Winters in the south, so it migrates long distances to warmer areas including South America, South Europe, and Africa
Runs along sandy beaches, with "bicycle gate." Feeds by picking at things in the sand (small invertabretes).
7 inch long body. Pale in the winter, face and throat turn red later in the summer. The juvenile has different coloration: spangled white and black (like the one pictured).
Ecological fun fact: The breeding pairings are either one male and one female, or one female and two males. The males are territorial nest defenders.