Bird watching in India / SAARC Region - Yellow-wattled Lapwing

The Yellow-wattled Lapwing (Vanellus malabaricus) is a lapwing that is endemic to the Indian Subcontinent. It is found mainly on the dry plains of peninsular India and has a sharp call and is capable of fast flight. Although they do not migrate, they are known to make seasonal movements in response to rains.

They are dull grey brown with a black cap, yellow legs and a triangular wattle at the base of the beak. Like other lapwings and plovers, they are ground birds and their nest is a mere collection of tiny pebbles within which their well camouflaged eggs are laid.

The chicks are nidifugous, leaving the nest shortly after hatching and following their parents to forage for food.

Nidifugous/ Precocial

nidifugous
adjective another term for PRECOCIAL.
ORIGIN early 20th cent.: from Latin nidus ‘nest’ + fugere ‘flee’

precocial Zoology
adjective (of a young bird or other animal) hatched or born in an advanced state and able to feed itself almost immediately. Also called NIDIFUGOUS.

Often contrasted with ALTRICIAL .

• (of a particular species) having such young.
noun a precocial bird.
ORIGIN late 19th cent.: from modern Latin Praecoces (the name of a former division of birds, plural of Latin praecox ‘mature before its time’)

Parent with a young baby forage for food

Yala, Sri Lanka - May 2017

Two young Yellow-wattled Lapwing

Yala, Sri Lanka - May 2017

A very young Yellow-wattled Lapwing

Yala, Sri Lanka - May 2017

Yellow-wattled Lapwing with 2 babies

Yala, Sri Lanka - May 2017

Habitat and distribution
This species is common in much of India, being seen in a variety of open lowland habitats. It tends to be seen in drier habitats than the Red-wattled Lapwing, Vanellus indicus.

They are found in most parts of India, parts of Pakistan Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. They make short distance movements in response to rain but the exact pattern is not known.

Range map from www.oiseaux.net - Ornithological Portal Oiseaux.net

www.oiseaux.net is one of those MUST visit pages if you're in to bird watching. You can find just about everything there

Taxonomy
The Yellow-wattled Lapwing was described by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in his Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux in 1781. The bird was also illustrated in a hand-coloured plate engraved by François-Nicolas Martinet in the Planches Enluminées D'Histoire Naturelle.

This plate was produced under the supervision of Edme-Louis Daubenton to accompany Buffon's text. Neither the plate caption nor Buffon's description included a scientific name but in 1783 the Dutch naturalist Pieter Boddaert coined the binomial name Charadrius malabaricus in his catalogue of the Planche Enluminées.

The type locality is the Malabar Coast in southwest India. The current genus Vanellus was erected by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson in 1760. Vanellus is the Medieval Latin for a "lapwing". It is a diminutive of the Latin vanus meaning "winnowing" or "fan". The species is monotypic.

Bundala National Park - 22nd of May 2017

We drive on the dirt road and suddenly we see a Red-wattled Lapwing and Yellow-wattled Lapwing. At first I think it is two Red-wattled Lapwings. But when we came closer I could see that it was a Yellow-wattled Lapwing. Good I thought, I can have a picture with both of them, nice to see the difference in size.

I was soon to discover that here was something going on. When the Red-wattled Lapwing was leaving the Yellow-wattled Lapwing got up and started to follow the Red-wattled Lapwing. The Red-wattled Lapwing turned around walking towards the other bird and the and Yellow-wattled Lapwing laid down again

It continued and the Red-wattled Lapwing started to get annoyed. Now they got head on and the Yellow-wattled Lapwing started to cry. Now my Guide/ Driver asked me to take a video, but it was too late.

Another Yellow-wattled Lapwing came from behind us and the bird dove down on the Red-wattled Lapwing and feathers were thrown in all directions. Then the Yellow-wattled Lapwing flew back to sit on the eggs. It was over in a few seconds. A few seconds that would have been nice to have on video.

Red-wattled Lapwing and Yellow-wattled Lapwing

Red-wattled Lapwing and Yellow-wattled Lapwing

Red-wattled Lapwing and Yellow-wattled Lapwing

Yellow-wattled Lapwing back to sit on the eggs

Description
These are conspicuous and unmistakable birds found in dry stony and open grassland or scrub habitats. They are medium-sized pale brown waders with a black crown which is separated from the brown on the neck by a narrow white band and large yellow facial wattles.

The chin and throat are black and the brown neck and upper breast is separated from the white belly by a narrow blackish line. The tail has a subterminal black band which does not extend into the outer tail-feathers. There is a white wingbar on the inner half of the wing. The bill is yellow at the base.

They have tiny yellow carpal spurs. The crown feathers can be raised slightly in displays. They are mostly sedentary but populations make long distance movements in response to the monsoons. They are occasional visitors to the Kathmandu valley in Nepal and a vagrant was seen in Malaysia.

There are no recognized subspecies, but there is a size increase from south to north. They are 260-280mm long with a wing of 192-211mm, bill 23-26mm, tarsus 57-66mm and tail 71-84mm. Juveniles have a brown crown and the sexes are alike but males have slightly longer wings and tarsi. The call is a sharp tchee-it call.

Local names include zirdi in Hindi, chitawa in Telugu and jithiri in Rajasthan and Pakistan, pili tatihri in Punjabi, laori in Madhya Pradesh, parasna titodi or vagdau titodi in Gujarati, pitmukhi titvi in Marathi, manjakanni in Malayalam, haladi tittibha in Kannada, aalkati in Tamil and kiraluwa in Sinhalese.

Listen to the Yellow-wattled Lapwing

Sound from www.xeno-canto.org

Behaviour and ecology
These lapwings breed in the dry season with peak breeding in March to May ahead of the monsoons. The nest territory has been estimated, based on the distance to nearest neighbours, to be about 2.7 acres. They lay four eggs in a ground scrape. A nest in a clump of grass has been noted as exceptional.

Parents visit water and wet their breast feathers ("belly soaking"; they may stay for as much as 10 minutes to soak water) which may then be used to cool the eggs or chicks. The four eggs typically hatch simultaneously, even though they are laid with a difference of a few days.

The nidifugous young are well camouflaged as they forage with the parents. Chicks squat flat on the ground and freeze when parents emit an alarm call. A second brood may be raised, particularly when the first fails and young from a previous brood have been seen along with parent birds incubating a second clutch.

Simultaneous courtship displays among several pairs in close proximity has been noted. In one study more than 60% of the nests had 4 eggs-clutches with the rest having 3 eggs. Hatching success was found to be about 27.58% and egg loss was due to predation and nest damage.

The incubation period was 27–30 days. When the nests are approached, the incubating bird attempts to move away from the nest without drawing attention to it.

The food of the yellow-wattled lapwing is beetles, termites and other invertebrates, which are picked from the ground. The feather mite Magimelia dolichosikya has been noted as an ectoparasite of this species.

Conservation status

Least Concern (IUCN 3.1)

International Union for Conservation of Nature. Retrieved 2 Oct 2009

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

www.birdforum.net

Sighted: (Date of first photo that I could use) 7th of January 2016
Location: Gir National Park, India

Among others I have used Peter Ericsson's web page Birds of Thailand These galleries contain 668 species of the Birds of Thailand and have been of a great help to identify some of the birds as the birds in Thailand and India are, well, many of them are the same.

I have had most help from my friend, the bird pal I met at Suan Rot Fai. Sending pictures of birds I have not been able to identify to him via Line. 3 minutes later he and he have managed to identify most of the birds I have had problems with. THANKS! Visit his web page m☥lever for his beautiful pictures.

PLEASE! As I'm a first time birdwatcher bear in mind that some of the bird can be wrongly named. I have bought book and I confirm on the internet to get the right identity on the birds I take pictures off. But there can still be mistakes.