Hooded Plover, Hooded Dotterel, Eastern Hooded Plover  |  

The hooded plover is a stocky, medium-sized wading bird about 20 cm long and approximately 100 g in mass. Adult males and adult females look alike and exhibit no seasonal variation. They have a black ‘hood’, a white ‘collar’ across the back of the neck bordered at the base by a thin strip of black, a black stripe that extends across the base of the neck and shoulders to the sides of the breast, pale brownish-grey upperparts and white underparts. When in flight, black and white colouring can be seen on the front and rear parts of the upper wing. Adults have a black-tipped red bill, red rings around the eyes, brown irises, and dull orange-pink legs and feet. There are slight morphological differences between the subspecies; the western subspecies has a longer bill and feet, and larger areas of black on the mantle. Juvenile birds differ from the adults by having mainly dull grey-brown colouring on the head as well as lacking the thin strip of black at the base of the collar, lacking the blackish stripe that extends across the base of the neck and shoulders to the sides of the breast. They have dark brown edging on the feathers of the upperparts, a mostly black bill with a small area of fleshy-pink colouring at the base, and pale orange rings around the eyes.