European golden plover

The European golden plover, also called the Eurasian golden plover or greater golden plover, is a relatively large species of plover formally described by Carl Linnaeus in 1758, initially in the genus Charadrius before Mathurin Jacques Brisson moved it to Pluvialis in 1760; the genus name comes from the Latin for rain, reflecting a belief that the birds flocked before rainfall, and the species name means to bask in the sun. It is monotypic, with no recognized subspecies, and is quite thickset, with wings only slightly longer than its tail, and is distinguished from the related American and Pacific golden plovers by its larger, stockier build, white rather than grey underwing feathers, and a distinctive white S shaped band running from the forehead to the flanks. It breeds across Arctic tundra and moorland from Iceland to central Siberia, with its southernmost populations historically in Wales and Belarus; a small breeding population on Dartmoor in southwest England went extinct around 2010. In winter it migrates southwest to Europe, northwest Africa and southwest Asia, gathering in large flocks on agricultural plains, ploughed land and short meadows. The IUCN lists it as Least Concern, though southern breeding populations have declined or vanished in Britain, Denmark, Belgium, Poland, Germany and Sweden, and Iceland now holds about a third of the global population.