Collared Pratincole : Glareola pratincola
Please click on the pictures to enlarge !
Sometimes you get word of a bird and you have to twitch. Drop everything and drive with a real fear that it will be gone before you arrive. It was - I was looking for a Caspian Plover in Summer plumage. I was so fixed in my goal that I hadn't twigged that I was bound to see a flock of Collared Pratincoles at the same place - of course the Pivot Fields of Dubai - the Cley - the Mecca of Dubai birding.
This was a life tick for me. There was a flock of about 30 birds - I was surrounded by them and at times they would whirl around the car hide.
So what is a Pratincole ? They look like a cross between a swallow (see the forked tail and long pointed wings) and a plover. They are an African bird primarily - with one or two species occuring in Eurasia and two in Australia out of the 17 in the Praticoles and Coursers group. They are social birds and live near water and on sand and mud chasing insects on the ground and on the wing. They are a bird of dry hot open habitats.
I am currently salivating over the few pictures I have of the African species I might see in Tanzania in July.
These Collared Pratincoles are on their way up to their Summer breeding grounds in Turkey and Syria - stopping off on route at our Pivot Fields.
A lifer - a Camera tick - a good twitch - lunchtime well spent. Caspian Plover can wait until another day.
Collared Pratincole, Glareola pratincola
Dubai Pivot Fields
18 April 2012
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