Alice Springs Desert Park

ASDP BirdsAustralian Boobook Owl Australian Bustard Australian Hobby Banded Lapwing Barn Owl Black Kite Black-breasted Buzzard Black-faced Woodswallow Black-fronted Dotterel Bourke’s Parrot Brown Falcon Emu Inland Dotterel Orange Chat Pied Honeyeater Princess Parrot Rainbow Bee-eater Red-capped Robin Spinifex Pigeon Splendid Fairy-wren Tawny Frogmouth Wedge-tailed Eagle Western Bowerbird Whistling Kite White-faced Heron White-winged Fairywren

Alice Springs Desert ParkFauna Flora Nature Theatre Nocturnal House

The Inland Dotterel (Peltohyas australis) is an endemic shorebird found mainly in the arid inland areas of Australian. They are also found in parts of the Pilbara, the lower west coast of Western Australia, Nullarbor Plains and the Eyre Peninsula, usually where the semi-arid and arid environment occur close to the sea.

Their habitats are dry, flat open environments that include claypans, stony gibber plains and gravel flats. In these treeless areas, they forage for seeds and insects (although they usually hunt for insects at night), having adapted to the wheat belt expanses of Western Australia.

The Inland Dotterel derives most of their water needs from succulent saltbush leaves.

They are considered monogamous, usually breed at any time of year, in response to heavy rainfall. The nest is a shallow depression that is scratched in the ground, sometimes in a hoofprint. The nest is ringed with small stones, twigs and other material scraped out of the depression. The Inland Dotterel cover their eggs with soil when the leave the nest, to hide them and protect them from the intense desert sun.

Common name
Inland Plover, Desert Plover, Australian Plover. It’s Arrernte Name is Ntyerlpenye (a name to describe dotterels and pipits), pronouced: n-jil-pin-ya.

Images © Ausemade Pty Ltd


  • Scientific classification
  • Kingdom: Animalia
  • Phylum: Chordata
  • Class: Aves
  • Order: Charadriiformes
  • Family: Charadriidae
  • Genus: Peltohyas
  • Species: Peltohyas australis
  • Synonyms: Charadrius australis

Footnote & References

  1. eBird, Inland Dotterel, https://ebird.org/species/inldot2

ASDP BirdsAustralian Boobook Owl Australian Bustard Australian Hobby Banded Lapwing Barn Owl Black Kite Black-breasted Buzzard Black-faced Woodswallow Black-fronted Dotterel Bourke’s Parrot Brown Falcon Emu Inland Dotterel Orange Chat Pied Honeyeater Princess Parrot Rainbow Bee-eater Red-capped Robin Spinifex Pigeon Splendid Fairy-wren Tawny Frogmouth Wedge-tailed Eagle Western Bowerbird Whistling Kite White-faced Heron White-winged Fairywren

ASDP FaunaASDP Arachnida ASDP Birds ASDP Insects ASDP Reptiles Dingo Ghost Bat Greater Bilby Numbat Red Kangaroo Short-beaked Echidna Spinifex Hopping Mouse Thorny Devil Western Quoll

Alice Springs Desert ParkFauna Flora Nature Theatre Nocturnal House