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Rock Pratincole | Glareola nuchalis
Rotsvorkstaartplevier | Canastera Sombría
The Rock Pratincole is a small, dark pratincole of rapids on large rivers, where it rests and breeds on rocks amid the rushing water. It is tied to low water levels: as soon as the rivers rise and the rocks are submerged, it disappears.
Voice
A high, thin, repeated keek-keek or pee-pee-pee, swallow-like; it calls a lot in flight and at roosts, audible above the roar of the water.
Recording: Andres Angulo — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · shortened to the first 60 s, mono · xeno-canto
Identification
18–20 cm. Dark grey-brown, with a narrow white stripe running from behind the eye across the nape to form a half-collar (in the West African subspecies the collar is rufous). The lower belly and rump are white, the short tail shallowly forked with a black terminal band. The bill is black with a red base; the legs are strikingly coral red. In flight it is slim and swallow-like, with dark wings, a white rump and a narrow white bar across the underwing. The sexes are alike; juveniles lack the white collar and have pale feather edges above.
Confusion species
Collared Pratincole Glareola pratincola is larger and sandy brown, with a cream throat outlined in black, a deeply forked tail, blackish legs and a rufous underwing; it sits on sandbanks and flats, not on rocks in flowing water. Egyptian Plover Pluvianus aegyptius of the same rivers in northern Angola is a contrasting black, blue-grey and creamy white.
Habitat
Rapids and rocky stretches of large rivers, with bare rocks protruding above the water. It hawks flying insects low over the water, often at dawn and dusk, and rests in small groups on the rocks. The eggs are laid in a crack or hollow on bare rock, sometimes just above the spray.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.
Range and movements
Along the Zambezi and its tributaries: from the Caprivi via Victoria Falls and the Batoka Gorge to the lower river in Mozambique, with further breeding sites in Zambia (including the Kafue and Luangwa), in Zimbabwe along the Zambezi, in northern Botswana along the Chobe, in Namibia at Popa Falls on the Okavango, in Malawi along the Shire and in Angola along rocky rivers such as the Cuanza and the Cunene. Beyond the region along large rivers in West and Central Africa, from Sierra Leone to Chad and Uganda.
- Resident
- Summer visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
At Victoria Falls and Popa Falls the birds often rest on the rocks below the rapids, easily seen from the bank. Come in the dry season (August–November), when the rocks are exposed and the birds breed; in the wet season the rocks are submerged and the species has largely gone.
Conservation status
Not threatened. It depends on free-flowing rivers: dams that flood rapids or regulate water levels unnaturally, as at Kariba and Cahora Bassa, have destroyed breeding sites locally, and disturbance by river tourism plays a local role.
Scientific name
Glareola nuchalis | Gray, 1849
Gray described the species in 1849 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Glareola was introduced in 1760 by Brisson. Glareola is a Latin diminutive of glarea 'gravel', after the bare gravelly ground where pratincoles nest. nuchalis comes from the Medieval Latin nucha, 'nape' — for the white band running from behind the eye across the nape. The specimen the first description was based on came from Fifth Cataract of the Nile near Berber, Sudan.