Black-bellied Plover - Southwest Florida

Black-bellied Plover, in winter plumage, lifting off:

I found this bird taking a bath in a shallow water. As I took initial photographs with the sun behind my back, seeing that this bird doesn’t mind my presence, I decided to crawl around it to get a backlit shot with hopes of getting sun reflected in the droplets to add some more interest to the image. As you saw in my previously posted video of a bathing Willet - https://www.greggard.com/blog/2020/3/willet-bath-florida-slomo-video at the end of a bath, birds usually take off to shake the water out of their wings. It was just a waiting game until this situation presented itself 😃

I took this photograph in one of my favorite spots to photograph wintering shorebirds in the Southwestern Florida. You can find detailed information on this location on page 15 of my latest guide to: https://www.greggard.com/location-guides/southwest-florida-bird-photography-location-guide-ebook

close-up of a Black-bellied Ploverl - Gulf Coast, Florida

Despite originally taking this photo as a backlit scene, I decided to add some detail back in the bird itself to show its identification characteristics, especially the black “armpit”.

Reading through the Cornell Lab’s interesting facts ( https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Black-bellied_Plover/overview ), I stumbled upon this information: “The Black-bellied Plover is the only American plover that has a hind toe on its foot—although the toe is so small it’s hard to see in the field.” If you look closely, you can see it on the bird’s left foot (the foot further back in this image).

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Here are some of my favorite shorebird guides for a quick read (to save money buy used books):