<p>Black-Bellied Plover (Pluvialis squatarola)  on the beach near Mendocino, California.  
Wary and quick to give alarm calls, the Black-bellied Plover functions worldwide as a sentinel for mixed groups of shorebirds. These qualities allowed it to resist market hunters, and it remained common when populations of other species of similar size were devastated.
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Reference &lt;a href="<a rel="nofollow" class="external free" href="http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Black-bellied_Plover/lifehistory">http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Black-bellied_Plover/lifehistory</a>" rel="nofollow"&gt;www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Black-bellied_Plover/lifehistory&lt;/a&gt;
<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.flickr.com/people/32541690@N02">Alan Vernon</a>
CC BY 2.0
<a href="//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Flickr" class="mw-redirect" title="Flickr">Flickr</a>: <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/32541690@N02/4037723330">Black-bellied Plover in nonbreeding plumage</a>