Small Pratincole Glareola lactea 灰燕鴴
Category I. Accidental.
IDENTIFICATION
Apr. 2017, LEE Kai Hong.
15-19 cm. Small pale grey-sandy pratincole with dark forehead and lores and obvious white orbital ring broadest at rear of eye. Primaries contrastingly dark greyish; legs same. Underparts below chest clean white. Base of bill deep red. Distinctive pattern in flight: black underwing coverts and whitish secondaries with broad grey tips, black tail; upperwing primary coverts dark greyish contrasting with grey-sandy inner wing coverts.
VOCALISATIONS
Vocal on the breeding grounds, where it utters tern or wader-like calls
DISTRIBUTION & HABITAT PREFERENCE
The sole record occurred at fish ponds in the northwest New Territories.
OCCURRENCE
2017: one at San Tin on 4 April (Lee 2019).
RANGE & SYSTEMATICS
Monotypic. East Afghanistan and Pakistan through much of the Indian subcontinent to Bangladesh, east to southwest China and south through Myanmar to Thailand, Laos and Cambodia (Maclean and Kirwan 2020). In China occurs regularly in southeast Tibet and western and southern Yunnan; has also occurred in Hainan (Liu and Chen 2020).
CONSERVATION STATUS
IUCN: Least Concern. Population trend unknown.
Lee, K. H. K. (2019). Small Pratincole Glareola lactea at San Tin. The first Hong Kong record. Hong Kong Bird Report 2017: 244-245.
Liu, Y. and Chen, Y. H. (eds) (2020). The CNG Field Guide to the Birds of China (in Chinese). Hunan Science and Technology Publication House, Changsha.
Maclean, G. L. and G. M. Kirwan (2020). Small Pratincole (Glareola lactea), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (J. del Hoyo, A. Elliott, J. Sargatal, D. A. Christie, and E. de Juana, Editors). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.smapra1.01
