- Glareola pratincola
Identification
22–25 cm (8¾-9¼ in)
- Brown head, back and wings
- Buff chin and throat (bordered in summer by a thin black line)
- Dark wing tips with whitish trailing edges
- Chestnut underwings
- White belly and rump
- Short black-tipped red bill
- Short black legs
- Long forked tail
Juvenile: mottled above and lacks the black line.
Similar Species
Black-winged Pratincole is darker overall and lacks the light trailing edge on the wings; the underwing is black.
Distribution
Southern Palearctic and tropical Africa. Europe, southwest Asia and Africa.
Vagrant to Northern Europe; annual in Britain and Ireland.
Vagrant to the Caribbean (Barbados)[6].
Taxonomy
Subspecies
There are 3 subspecies1:
- G. p. pratincola:
- G. p. erlangeri:
- G. p. fuelleborni:
- Senegal to southern Kenya, Zaire, Namibia and eastern South Africa
Habitat
Near water. Open country; mud flats with low vegetation. Also canals, wet meadows and saltpans.
Behaviour
Often crepuscular.
Flight
Rather tern-like when hawking for insects. Flight outline also recalls large hirundine.
Diet
The diet consist mostly of large insects, such as grasshoppers, beetles, locusts, termites and flies which are usually aerially hawked but they also feed on the ground.
Breeding
Breeds colonially. Two to four eggs are laid in a ground scrape.
Vocalisation
Call: hard kyik or kittik
References
- Clements, J. F., T. S. Schulenberg, M. J. Iliff, S. M. Billerman, T. A. Fredericks, B. L. Sullivan, and C. L. Wood. 2019. The eBird/Clements Checklist of Birds of the World: v2019. Downloaded from http://www.birds.cornell.edu/clementschecklist/download/
- Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive (retrieved October 2016)
- Collins Pocket Guide to British Birds 1966
- Collins Field Guide 5th Edition
- Collins Bird Guide ISBN 0 00 219728 6
- 51st supplement to the AOU checklist of North American birds
Recommended Citation
- BirdForum Opus contributors. (2025) Collared Pratincole. In: BirdForum, the forum for wild birds and birding. Retrieved 5 May 2025 from https://www.birdforum.net/opus/Collared_Pratincole
External Links
GSearch checked for 2020 platform.1
