Animalia Life

Glareola pratincola
SUBFAMILY
Glareolinae
TAXONOMY
Hirundo pratincola Linnaeus, 1766, Austria. Three subspecies recognized.
OTHER COMMON NAMES
English: Common pratincole, red-winged pratincole, locust bird, swallow-plover; French: Glarйole а collier; German: Rotflьgel Brachschwalbe; Spanish: Canastera Comъn.
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS
8.7–9.8 in (22–25 cm); 2.1–3.7 oz (60–104 g). Slender, shortlegged, long-winged; plumage mostly smoky grayish brown shading to white on belly. Throat yellowish buff surrounded by narrow black collar (absent when not breeding). Bill red at base and around gape. Underwing coverts dull rusty brown to chestnut.
DISTRIBUTION
The most widespread of the pratincoles. Breeding populations are scattered discontinuously throughout sub-Saharan Africa and Eurasia from Spain to Lake Balkhash in Kazakhstan. Nonbreeding birds migrate to sub-Saharan Africa.
HABITAT
Istvбn Sterbetz describes the habitat as the zone between short-grass steppes and desert, as well as floodplains, dried estuarine mud banks, and marine shore with semi-desert features.
BEHAVIOR
Collared pratincoles are highly gregarious at all times, even when breeding. They spend much time resting on the ground between bouts of aerial feeding. They tend to be vocal, especially in breeding colonies and on migration. Their flight is buoyant.
FEEDING ECOLOGY AND DIET
Catch flying insects on the wing and chase prey on the ground by running or by a short leap into the air. Food is mainly grasshoppers and beetles; during locust plagues, flocks of pratincoles devour large numbers of these insects.
REPRODUCTIVE BIOLOGY
Breeds in spring in the Northern Hemisphere, in the dry season in most of tropical Africa and in early summer in southern Africa; breeding is usually in loose colonies. The nest is a shallow scrape, sometimes lined with a few bits of earth or dry plant fragments. The clutch in Eurasia is usually three eggs, but only two in Africa. The eggs are whitish to cream, heavily blotched with black, gray, and brown. Both sexes incubate for 17–19 days, and feed the precocial chicks for at least a week. The young fly at the age of about a month.
CONSERVATION STATUS
Though not globally threatened, collared pratincoles have declined in numbers in Europe and parts of Africa as a result of pesticides, artificial fertilizers, habitat destruction, and disturbance, especially of breeding colonies. Breeding sites need protection.
SIGNIFICANCE TO HUMANS
Apart from the commercial collecting of eggs, the collared pratincole has little
SIGNIFICANCE TO HUMANS
. In the past it probably helped to control locust plagues, but the decline in numbers reduces the birds’ impact in this regard.

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