Hooded Dotterel Or Hooded Plover Poem by Francis Duggan

With dark brown head light brown wings and unders gray
Birds I see often though not every day
They stop to eat marine insects on the beach as they run along
Once seen small shore birds one cannot get wrong
Hooded dotterel or hooded plover for them another name
Though not too shy of humans still wary of us just the same
When you get close to them low along the beach they do fly
I've yet to see them flying high in the sky
Just above the high tide line on the sand the female lay
Two to three pale dark freckled eggs from water not far away
They often search around where tiny marine life hide
Amongst the kelp and seaweed washed in by the tide
The adults with pink feet black and red bills and red ring around either eye
Of human kind though wary they are not too shy.