Collared Pratincole

• It catches insects on the wing like a swallow, but belongs to the same order as plovers and gulls.
• It breeds on the bare ground of farmland, which makes it highly vulnerable to fieldwork.
• Its Catalan and Galician names, perdiu de mar and perdiz do mar — sea partridge — reflect how baffling it is to classify at a glance.

Skeleton type

Vertebrate - internal bony skeleton (bird)

Habitat & environment

A fragmented distribution in Spain, almost confined to the southern half of the peninsula and the Mediterranean coast. The bulk of the breeding population is in the Guadalquivir basin; there are scattered nuclei in the agro-steppe settings of Extremadura and eastern Castilla-La Mancha, the Andalusian Mediterranean coast, the Campo de Cartagena, southern Alicante and the coastal wetlands of Valencia

Size at birth

Precocial chicks that leave the nest early and are tended by the adults for 25 to 30 days, until they fly

Gestation / incubation

17-19 days of incubation, shared by both sexes

Litter / clutch size

Usually 3 eggs, with clutches of 2 to 4

Sources consulted: IUCN Red List; SEO/BirdLife (III Atlas: Vera 2022); Junta de Andalucía (Programa de Emergencias y Seguimiento de Fauna Silvestre); Calvo 1994, Quercus 106; Arnaldos et al. 2014 (Mar Menor)

Best time: From spring to summer in the farmland steppes and wetlands of southern Spain