Dotterel 02

Dotterel     Charadrius morinellus

An upland bird that is often unconcerned by humans.     I was a bit lucky to find this bird  because it had moved quite a distance from where it had been seen a few days previously.   The photo shows the brightly coloured female.  The males are quite drab, and is a sign of this birds role reversal,  as it is the male that incubates the eggs and rears the children.  The bird is classified as a wader (plover), but strikes me of being very similar to the Courser (another long legged wader that prefers to run along the ground to catch insects), which I have seen in Namibia.

Photos: Derbyshire, May 2009.

Dotterel 08

Dotterel 07 crop

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