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The largest of the family Charadridæ is the black-bellied plover.

The black-bellied plover is reasonably common along the coast line, but it is not seen to any great extent in the interior valleys.

But as the afternoon wears on and the water retreats, a crowd of little birds arrives to feast in the shallows: short-billed dowitchers, Western sandpipers, a black-bellied plover.

On Isle Grand Terre, LSU researcher Richard Gibbons saw a black-bellied plover, a skinny-legged shorebird, with oil on its face.

It is a birders' ecstasy for a few minutes�a blue-winged teal, a pectoral sandpiper, a black-bellied plover.