Charadrius vociferus

Large range; large population size; many subpopulations; nesting range expanded historically into many human-altered habitats, but Breeding Bird Survey data indicate a slow decline in recent decades.

Nesting range extends from eastern Alaska east across Canada (through northern Saskatchewan and southern Hudson Bay region) to Newfoundland, south to southern Baja California, central Mexico, Gulf of Mexico coast of the southeastern United States, southern Florida, West Indies, and, disjunctly, in Costa Rica and western South America (coastal Peru, extreme northwestern Chile, and southwestern Ecuador) (Stiles and Skutch 1989, AOU 1998, Jackson and Jackson 2000). This species has also recently been documented breeding in interior Colombia, where the species was previously only considered a nonbreeding visitor (Castro Vargas et al. 2021).

During the nonbreeding season, the range extends from southeastern Alaska (rarely), southern British Columbia, central United States, and New England south to the West Indies and northern South America (west of Andes to western Ecuador and east to northern Venezuela, and in the breeding range in Peru and Chile). This species sometimes shows up in Europe, Hawaii, and elsewhere outside the primary range.

This species is represented by a very large number of occurrences.

This ground-nesting species often nests in the vicinity of human activities, and many nests are destroyed as a result. Cats, dogs, and populations of native predators that have benefited from anthropogenic food resources probably are significant sources of mortality. Locally, pesticides and other contaminants likely have detrimentally affected killdeer populations (see Jackson and Jackson 2000).

Formerly this species was shot in apparently large numbers, especially along the Atlantic coast in the late 1890s and early 1900s, and populations evidently declined (Jackson and Jackson 2000).