This species looks like a small, buffy edition of the Upland Sandpiper, at times its grassland associate. It is very tame and when approached merely runs through the short grass instead of flying off. Like the American Golden-Plover, it undertakes an amazing migration in both spring and fall. After the nesting season in the far Northwest, it migrates southward on a broad front, eventually ending up on the Argentine pampas, where it spends the winter. On the return passage in spring its movements are much more confined, carrying it chiefly up the Mississippi Valley and to the West, but ultimately back to the Arctic shores of Alaska and Canada.