Rocky Mountain Plover

Poorly named, this pallid plover is a bird of flat open plains, not mountains. Of all of our 'shorebirds,' this is the one most disconnected from the shore, generally living miles from water in the dry country of the west. The short-grass prairie where it once thrived has been largely converted to farmland, but the Mountain Plover has found new habitat in grassland overgrazed by cattle.