Courtesy Preview
This Introductory article that you are viewing is a courtesy preview of the full life history account of this species. The remaining articles (Distribution, Habitat, Behavior, etc.), as well as the Multimedia Galleries and Reference sections of this account are subscriber-only content, and you will need a subscription in order to view the species account in its entirety. Click on the Subscribe tab for more information.
If you are already a current subscriber, you will need to sign in with your login information to access BNA normally.
Demography and Populations
Measures Of Breeding Activity
Age At First Breeding; Intervals Between Breeding
Age at first breeding unknown. Adults apparently breed annually, since Bergstrom (1982) and Corbat (1990) observed breeding by banded adults in consecutive years.
Clutch
See Breeding: eggs, above. Generally only 1 brood; will renest if first nest is destroyed. Modal clutch size 3 (n = 51; Bergstrom 1988a, Corbat 1990).
Annual And Lifetime Reproductive Success
Annual reproductive success varies among nest sites and years. Six (25%) of 24 nests with known outcome at 2 Texas sites hatched ≥1 young in 1979; 14 (53.8%) of 26 produced ≥1 young in 1980 (Bergstrom 1988a). Hatching success calculated in same manner ranged from 10.8 to 55.2% for various sites in 1986–1987 in Georgia (Corbat 1990).
No information on fledging success or lifetime reproductive success.
Number Of Broods Normally Reared Per Season
Generally 1.
Proportion Of Total Females That Rear At Least One Brood To Nest-Leaving Or Independence
No information.
Life Span And Survivorship
No information.
Disease And Body Parasites
No information.
Causes Of Mortality
No information.
Range
Initial Dispersal From Natal Site
No information on distances dispersed between fledging and first breeding. See also Breeding: fledgling stage, above.
Fidelity To Breeding Site And Winter Home Range
Thirty-five Wilson’s Plovers were captured at nests on Georgia barrier beaches and color-banded. Of these, 17 (48.6%) were resighted in ≥1 subsequent years. Of those, 15 (88.2%) were on same island and 9 (52.9%) were on same beach where they had been banded. Of 15 birds that returned to same island, 9 (60%) also re-turned to same beach. In Texas, 2 pairs banded in 1980 were found nesting in 1981 41 and 303 m, respectively, from previous year’s nest sites (Bergstrom 1988a).
Home Range
No information.
Population Status
Numbers
No formal studies of population status anywhere in range. In Georgia, Rappole (1981) estimated 360 pairs in Georgia in 1980; probably only 200–250 pairs by 1987 (CAC). Estimated 20–35 pairs in Virginia (Virginia Dept. of Game and Inland Fisheries 1991). Brown et al. (2000) estimated 6,000 in North America at present, but assigned a low level of confidence to the estimate.
Trends
Brown et al. (2000) list Wilson’s Plover pop-ulation status in their “stable or status unknown” category.
Population Regulation
No information.
Corbat, Carol A. and Peter W. Bergstrom. 2000. Wilson's Plover (Charadrius wilsonia), The Birds of North America Online (A. Poole, Ed.). Ithaca: Cornell Lab of Ornithology; Retrieved from the Birds of North America Online: http://bna.birds.cornell.edu/bna/species/516
