Sandgrouse | Pterocliformes

Zandhoenderachtigen | Gangas

Compact birds of dry, open plains: small head, short neck, full breast and very long pointed wings giving a fast, direct flight on sharp, angular beats. The dense plumage is finely spotted and barred in sand, ochre, grey and cream, covers even the bare tracts most birds have between their feather fields, and continues onto the legs; the claws are short and the hind toe is small or absent, so these birds do not perch. The food is almost entirely small hard seeds, picked one at a time and in great numbers off bare ground. That dry diet forces a daily drink: flocks fly each day at a fixed hour to open water, sometimes tens of kilometres away, drink by sucking with the head held down, and are gone again within seconds. Their arrival is announced by flight calls on which the species can be told apart at long range.

Families in this order

Sandgrouse | Pteroclidae4 speciesThe most striking feature lies in the male's belly feathers: their barbules coil up when wetted and hold water like a sponge. He soaks his underparts at the drinking place until the plumage is saturated, flies back to the brood and lets the chicks strip the water out of his feathers with their bills — nowhere else in the bird world is water carried this way. The female is more finely and densely barred than the male and vanishes completely on the nest; the nest is no more than an unlined shallow scrape holding usually three elongated eggs, equally blunt at both ends. The pair take turns incubating, with the male sitting through the night. The species of this region divide the day between them: one flock comes to drink soon after sunrise, another in the late afternoon or in the last light, and each species has its own call in flight. The downy chicks leave the scrape within a day, pick up their own seed from the start, and press themselves motionless to the ground when danger appears.