Pin-Tailed Sandgrouse | Pterocles alchata

Voice

The flight call is a dry, nasal, high-pitched katarr-katarr-katarr, with a second variant closer to gala-gala. A passing flock calls almost without a break and the sound carries several hundred metres, so on the plains you nearly always hear the birds before you see them. The Spanish name ganga is taken from this call.

Identification

Upperparts ochre to rust, heavily spotted and barred; belly clean white. The central tail feathers are drawn out into two fine needles that trail behind the bird, longer on the male. Males have a green-grey crown, a black throat patch and a narrow chestnut breast band set between two white lines; females are more finely streaked and show three dark lines across the breast. Legs short and feathered, bill small and grey.

Confusion species

The only real confusion is with Black-Bellied Sandgrouse, and since both are normally seen in flight it comes down to four features. Belly: clean white here, solid black on Black-bellied, which makes the underside look cut in two. Underwing: white coverts on both, but on Pin-tailed they set off a black trailing edge against otherwise white underparts, while on Black-bellied the white is squeezed between black flight feathers and a black belly. Tail: only Pin-tailed carries the two needle-like streamers, seen as a thin spike behind an otherwise short, pointed tail. And the call, which settles it: Pin-tailed rattles high and dry, Black-bellied rolls low and growling. Structure helps too, Pin-tailed being smaller, faster and sharper-winged, Black-bellied broader and heavier, more like a partridge.

Habitat

Flat, treeless and very open country: dry grassland, fallow, winter cereal on unirrigated land, and the saline flats around inland salt lakes. Tall crops, plantations, slopes and broken stony ground are avoided. Flocks fly to water early in the morning, at cattle troughs, reservoir edges or a pool left in a ditch. The male soaks his belly feathers there and carries the water back to the chicks, which drink it straight from the plumage.

Range and movements

The European stronghold is the Iberian Peninsula, with the best populations in the Ebro basin (Belchite, Los Monegros, Bardenas), the plains of Lleida, Tierra de Campos and around Villafáfila, in La Mancha and on the Extremaduran plains of La Serena and the Llanos de Cáceres; smaller numbers occur in the far west of the peninsula and there is a single isolated population on the Crau near Arles. Beyond Europe the species breeds across North Africa and from Anatolia east across the Iranian Plateau to the steppes of Central Asia. It does not reach north-west Europe.

• Resident
• Breeding (summer)
• Winter
• Passage
• dark = core range, pale = thinly spread

How and when to look

Be in position at a drinking place on the steppe before sunrise and stay put. Flocks arrive during the first hour of daylight, always calling, and that is when the identification is made. La Serena, the El Planerón reserve at Belchite and the plains of Villafáfila are classic sites. Otherwise drive slowly along field tracks across fallow and scan: on the ground only a moving head or a glimpse of white belly gives the bird away.

Conservation status

Not globally threatened. The isolated population on the Crau is down to a few hundred birds. Loss of fallow, the shift from dry farming to irrigated crops, solar plants on old steppe and disturbance at drinking sites are the main pressures.

Scientific name

Pterocles alchata | (Linnaeus, 1766)

Linnaeus described the species in 1766 as Tetrao alchata; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Pterocles was introduced in 1815 by Temminck. Pterocles is Greek, from pteron 'wing' and -klēs 'notable, splendid'. alchata goes back to Arabic al-qaṭā, the name for sandgrouse, formed from the bird's call. The specimen the first description was based on came from southwestern Europe.