Oriental Pratincole (Glareola maldivarum)
About the Oriental Pratincole
The oriental pratincole (Glareola maldivarum), also known as the grasshopper-bird or swallow-plover, is a wader in the pratincole family, Glareolidae. The genus name is a diminutive of Latin glarea, "gravel", referring to a typical nesting habitat for pratincoles. The species name, maldivarum, refers to the type locality, the ocean near the Maldive Islands. The type specimen, caught alive at sea, survived for a month on flies. The Oriental pratincole has short legs, long pointed wings and long forked tails. It has a short bill, which is an adaptation to aerial feeding. The back and head are brown, and the wings are brown with black flight feathers. The belly is white and the underwings are chestnut.
A real field recording of the Oriental Pratincole. Press play and focus on the rhythm and pitch of each phrase.
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Our streaming copies are mirrored from the original xeno-canto file and transcoded to 96 kbps mono — a modification, so we note it here; the licence for each recording is named in its credit below.
1 recording on this page · licensed CC BY-SA ×1 · mirrored on this server, free for commercial reuse · recorded in Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines and elsewhere · xeno-canto lists 52 recordings for this species in total.
Similar species
- Black-winged PratincoleGlareola nordmanniprofile
- Collared PratincoleGlareola pratincolaprofile
- Grey PratincoleGlareola cinereaprofile
- Madagascar PratincoleGlareola ocularisprofile
- Rock PratincoleGlareola nuchalisprofile
- Small PratincoleGlareola lacteaprofile
Species grouped by shared genus, family and range.