Eurasian dotterel

Voice

A soft, slightly rippling pwit-pwit, far more discreet than the clear whistle of Golden Plover and already hard to catch at any distance. Migrating parties drop a short dweet in August and September, usually just before pitching onto a field. On the breeding grounds it gives a muffled trilling roll.

Identification

Compact plover with yellow legs and a short black bill. Breeding birds show a grey breast cut off by a white band, an orange-chestnut belly with a black patch, and broad white superciliaries meeting on the nape. Winter and juvenile birds keep supercilium and faint breast band on scaly buff-brown plumage. In flight the upperwing is wholly plain, with no wingbar, a dark rump and pale underwing.

Confusion species

Golden Plover is larger and longer-winged and looks spangled gold above rather than scaly buff-brown. What settles it is the broad white supercilium meeting on the nape and the narrow white band across the breast of Dotterel. In flight Golden Plover shows a white underwing with white axillaries, whereas Dotterel looks evenly greyish below.

Habitat

Breeds on bare plateaux above the treeline: lichen tundra, boulder fields and wind-scoured ridges in Scotland, Scandinavia, the Alps and the Pyrenees. On migration it seeks the flattest, barest farmland it can find, from freshly ploughed fields and potato ridges to stubbles and open polder soil, always with wide views and almost no vegetation.

Range and movements

A breeder of northern tundra and high mountains from Scotland and Norway far into Siberia, with small populations in the Alps and Pyrenees. It winters in a narrow belt from Morocco to Iran. In the Netherlands it is a scarce passage migrant at traditional fields in Flevoland and Groningen; Spain sees regular passage plus a handful of pairs breeding in the Pyrenees.

• Breeding (summer)
• Winter
• Passage
• Migration direction
• dark = core range, pale = thinly spread

Where and when to look

Try the well-known staging fields of Flevoland and the Groningen clay in late August or early September, and arrive early before the birds warm up and start feeding. Stay on the road: the species is famously tame, but a disturbed party scatters at once. Scope carefully, because a resting Dotterel looks exactly like a clod of earth.

Conservation status

The European population is declining; Scottish numbers have fallen sharply and Scandinavian breeding grounds are emptying too. Warming pushes the suitable high-mountain climate upwards and lets bare summits grow over. On migration the birds depend on a handful of traditional fields that a change of crop or earlier cultivation can remove overnight.