Gavin O'Brien was very helpful in sorting out the Greater and Lesser Sand-Plovers. Lessers have a consistently thinner, more delicate bill and shorter legs. In the top photo, the Lesser Sand-Plover is in front of a Greater Sand-Plover. This species usually arrives in August although a few may stay through the Austral winter. Five subspecies are recognized. Clements and IOC attribute birds wintering in Australia to either nominate C. m. mongolus or C. m. stegmanni. The two are not easily separable in the field. Stegmanni average shorter legged, longer winged and more stubby billed. This bird shows characters consistent with nominate mongolus.
English spelling varies. Clements changed from "Sandplover" to "Sand-Plover" following the AOU in 2009. The BOU and IOC consistently spell it "Sand Plover" (no hyphen) but in July 2014, Birdlife International switched from "Sand Plover" to "Sandplover" following HBW. "The nice thing about standards is that you have so many to choose from." -- Andrew S. Tanenbaum (1981).
Background: Great Knots, Greater Sandplover, Ruddy Turnstone.
Digiscoped with Panasonic DMC-LZ5 | Nikon FieldScope III | 30XWA | hand-held (no adapter)