Lesser Sand-Plover at South Cape Beach, August 14, 2023. Photograph by Mary Keleher.

On Saturday, August 5, 2023, Keelin Miller and I braved the summer weekend traffic to drive from Cape Cod, Massachusetts, to Napatree Point, Westerly, Rhode Island, with high hopes of seeing a Lesser Sand-Plover (Charadrius mongolus) that had been found there earlier that morning. Lesser Sand-Plovers are native to Asia and occasionally show up in northwest Alaska, so we really wanted to see this rare vagrant. We arrived at 1:00 pm and lucked out finding a parking spot. We hiked out to the lagoon area where the bird had been seen and photographed. We joined a handful of other birders and spent the next five hours searching for the sand-plover. Unfortunately, no one relocated it that day.