For the Australasian species sometimes known as spur-winged plover, see Masked lapwing. For the Southeast Asian species formerly considered conspecific with Vanellus spinosus, see River lapwing.
Spur-winged lapwing
Upper side of wings - note the spurs on the leading edge of the carpal joint
These are conspicuous and unmistakable birds. They are medium-large waders with black crown, chest, foreneck stripe and tail. The face, the rest of the neck and belly are white and the wings and back are light brown. The bill and legs are black. Its striking appearance is supplemented by its noisy nature, with a loud did-he-do-it call. The bird's common name refers to a small claw or spur hidden in each of its wings.
In eastern and southern Africa the species has seen a range increase, entering Zambia for the first time in 1999 and spreading south and west.[7]
Behaviour and ecology
This species has a preference for marshes and similar freshwater wetland habitats. The food of the spur-winged lapwing is insects and other invertebrates, which are picked from the ground.
It lays four blotchy yellowish eggs on a ground scrape. The spur-winged lapwing is known to sometimes use the wing-claws in an attack on animals and, rarely, people, who get too close to the birds' exposed offspring.
The "spur-winged plover" was identified by Henry Scherren as the "trochilus" bird said by the Greek historian Herodotus[8] to be involved in what would now be called a cleaning symbiosis with the Nile crocodile.[9] However, there is no reliable evidence that this or any other species in fact has such a relationship,[10] although Cott does record that spur-winged plovers are the birds that most often feed around basking crocodiles, and are tolerated by them.[11]
^Scherren, Henry (1906). Popular Natural History. Cassell. p. 268. Mr. J.M. Cook, of the celebrated tourist agency, when in Egypt in 1876, "watched one of these birds, and saw it deliberately go up to a crocodile, apparently asleep, which opened its jaws. The bird hopped in, and the crocodile closed its jaws. In what appeared to be a very short time, probably not more than a minute or two, the crocodile opened its jaws, and we saw the bird go down to the water's edge." There were several of these birds about, and Mr. Cook shot two of them, which Dr. Sclater identified as Spur-winged Plovers; so that the question as to what bird enters the mouth of the crocodile is now set at rest.
^Macfarland, Craig G.; Reeder, W.G. (1974). "Cleaning symbiosis involving Galapagos tortoises and two species of Darwin's finches". Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie. 34 (5): 464–483. doi:10.1111/j.1439-0310.1974.tb01816.x. PMID4454774.
^Cott, H. B. (1961). Scientific results of an inquiry into the ecology and economic status of the Nile Crocodile (Crocodilus niloticus) in Uganda and Northern Rhodesia. Transactions of the Zoological Society of London, 29, 211-356. [1]
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