| Namaqua sandgrouse | |
|---|---|
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| Male | |
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| Female | |
Scientific classification  | |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Pterocliformes |
| Family: | Pteroclidae |
| Genus: | Pterocles |
| Species: | P. namaqua |
| Binomial name | |
| Pterocles namaqua (Gmelin, JF, 1789) | |
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| IUCN range Extant (resident) | |
The Namaqua sandgrouse (Pterocles namaqua), is a species of ground-dwelling bird in the sandgrouse family. It is found in arid regions of south-western Africa.
The Namaqua sandgrouse was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae . He placed it with all the grouse like birds in the genus Tetrao and coined the binomial name Tetrao namaqua. [2] Gmelin based his description on the "Namaqua grous" that had been described in 1783 by the English ornithologist John Latham in his A General Synopsis of Birds. [3] The Namaqua sandgrouse is now placed with 13 other species in genus Pterocles that was introduced in 1815 by the Dutch zoologist Coenraad Jacob Temminck. [4] [5] The genus name combines the Ancient Greek pteron meaning "wing" with -klēs meaning "notable" or "splendid". The specific epithet namaqua is from Namaqualand, a region in Namibia and South Africa, the type locality. [6] The species is monotypic: no subspecies are recognised. [5]
The sandgrouse is a medium-sized bird with a plump body, small head and short legs. It grows to a length of about 28 centimetres (11 in). The male has an orangish buff head, throat and chest delineated by a conspicuous narrow band of white and dark brown. The back and wings are mottled brown with large white specks and there are two long black filaments extending from the olive-brown tail. The colouring of the female and juvenile is more cryptic being generally various shades of brown patterned with white specks. [7] It could be confused with the double-banded sandgrouse (Pterocles bicinctus) and Burchell's sandgrouse (Pterocles burchelli), which share the same range.
The Namaqua sandgrouse can be found in various arid parts of South Africa and its neighbouring lands. It is common in the Kalahari Desert, the Nama Karoo (in central and western South Africa), and in parts of the Western Cape. In addition, it is also found in Namibia (especially in the Namib Desert), Zimbabwe, Botswana and Angola.
It favours deserts and other arid areas. In order to survive, this bird needs only seeds, some gravel, and easy access to some sort of fresh water source. Their habitat usually has rough vegetation and tussock-type grasses. [8]
Outside the breeding season, the sandgrouse are gregarious. The birds converge on watering holes in the early morning and several dozens or even hundreds of individuals may congregate in one place. They also tend to spend the night in groups, congregating about an hour before dusk. They split up during the day into much smaller groups to feed.
Their principal diet is seeds but they also eat leaves, flowers, small fruit, insects and molluscs. [7] They forage by exploring loose soil with their beaks and flicking it away sideways. [9]
Breeding takes place at any time of the year and is dependent on rainfall. Usually the nests are solitary but sometimes several pairs of birds choose sites near each other. The nest is a scrape in the earth, scantily lined with dried plant material. Two or three pinkish-grey eggs with brown markings are laid over the course of a few days. Incubation starts after the last egg has been laid and lasts about 22 days. The female does the incubation by day and the male does a longer shift at night, starting about two hours before sunset and finishing two hours after dawn. [10] The chicks are precocial and able to leave the nest on the day they are hatched. The male brings them water absorbed on the specially adapted feathers of his breast. The chicks grow rapidly; they are fully feathered at three weeks and able to fly at six.
The species is common within its range and is considered to be of Least Concern by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. [1] The birds are at risk of predation by mongooses while they are young. Sheep farmers kill birds of prey and jackals to protect their flocks and this may have resulted in an increase in the mongoose population and consequently a diminution in the number of sandgrouse chicks that survive. [7] Other predators that prey on the Namaqua sandgrouse include the booted eagle (Aquila pennatus), the tawny eagle (Aquila rapax), the lanner falcon (Falco biarmicus) and the peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus). [9] The Namaqua sandgrouse is a host of the Acanthocephalan intestinal parasite Moniliformis kalahariensis . [11]
Sandgrouse is the common name for Pteroclidae, a family of sixteen species of bird, members of the order Pterocliformes. They are traditionally placed in two genera. The two central Asian species are classified as Syrrhaptes and the other fourteen species, from Africa and Asia, are placed in the genus Pterocles. They are ground dwelling birds restricted to treeless, open country, such as plains, savannahs, and semi-deserts. They are distributed across northern, southern, and eastern Africa, Madagascar, the Middle East, and India through central Asia. The ranges of the black-bellied sandgrouse and the pin-tailed sandgrouse even extend into the Iberian Peninsula and France, and Pallas's sandgrouse occasionally breaks out in large numbers from its normal range in Asia.
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The short-billed dowitcher, like its congener the long-billed dowitcher, is a medium-sized, stocky, long-billed shorebird in the family Scolopacidae.
The booted eagle is a medium-sized mostly migratory bird of prey with a wide distribution in the Palearctic and southern Asia, wintering in the tropics of Africa and Asia, with a small, disjunct breeding population in south-western Africa. Like all eagles, it belongs to the family Accipitridae.
The shikra is a small bird of prey in the family Accipitridae found widely distributed in Asia and Africa where it is also called the little banded goshawk. The African forms may represent a separate species but have usually been considered as subspecies of the shikra. The shikra is very similar in appearance to other sparrowhawk species including the Chinese goshawk and Eurasian sparrowhawk. They have a sharp two note call and have the typical flap and glide flight. Their calls are imitated by drongos and the common hawk-cuckoo resembles it in plumage.
The pin-tailed sandgrouse is a medium large bird in the sandgrouse family. It has a small, pigeon like head and neck and a sturdy, compact body. It has long pointed wings, which are white underneath, a long tail and a fast direct flight. Flocks fly to watering holes at dawn. The call is a loud kattar-kattar. This gregarious species breeds on dry open treeless plains and similar habitats. Its nest is a ground scrape into which two or three cream-coloured eggs with cryptic markings are laid. Both sexes incubate the eggs.
The black-bellied sandgrouse is a medium large bird in the sandgrouse family.
The sooty falcon is a medium-sized falcon breeding from northeastern Africa to the southern Persian Gulf region. The word sooty means to be covered in soot (ash), and is used to describe the color of the Sooty Falcon. Hence, the falcon gets its name from its color, the color of soot.
The grey francolin is a species of francolin found in the plains and drier parts of the Indian subcontinent and Iran. This species was formerly also called the grey partridge, not to be confused with the European grey partridge. They are mainly ground-living birds and are found in open cultivated lands as well as scrub forest and their local name of teetar is based on their calls, a loud and repeated Ka-tee-tar...tee-tar which is produced by one or more birds. The term teetar can also refer to other partridges and quails. During the breeding season calling males attract challengers, and decoys were used to trap these birds especially for fighting.
The rain quail or black-breasted quail is a species of quail found in the Indian Sub-continent and South-east Asia; its range including Pakistan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.
The painted sandgrouse is a medium large bird in the sandgrouse family Pteroclidae found in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan.
The chestnut-bellied sandgrouse or common sandgrouse is a species of sandgrouse. It is a sedentary and nomadic species that ranges from northern and central Africa and further east towards western and southern Asia. There are six recognised subspecies.
The marbled wood quail, also known as the Amazonian wood quail, is a species of bird in the New World quail family. It has an extensive distribution in Central America and the northern part of South America. Its natural habitat is subtropical or tropical moist lowland forests.
The Cape starling, also known as red-shouldered glossy-starling or Cape glossy starling, is a species of starling in the family Sturnidae. It is found in Southern Africa, where it lives in woodlands, bushveld and in suburbs.
The double-banded sandgrouse is a species of predominantly terrestrial, or ground-dwelling, bird in the family Pteroclidae. It is found in arid parts of southern Africa.
Burchell's sandgrouse is a species of bird in the family Pteroclidae. It is found in arid and semi-arid regions of southern Africa. The name of this bird commemorates the English naturalist William John Burchell.
The crowned sandgrouse is a species of bird in the sandgrouse family, the Pteroclidae from North Africa and the Middle East.
The Madagascar sandgrouse is a species of bird in the family Pteroclidae. It is endemic to Madagascar and is a ground-dwelling short-legged plump bird. The head of the male is brown with a black area surrounding the beak. It has a pinkish-buff coloured breast, a light brown mottled back, brown wings and paler underparts barred with dark brown. The female has a generally duller appearance being cryptically coloured brown with dark specks and bars.
The spotted sandgrouse is a species of ground dwelling bird in the family Pteroclidae. It is found in arid regions of northern and eastern Africa and across the Middle East and parts of Asia as far east as northwest India. It is a gregarious, diurnal bird and small flocks forage for seed and other vegetable matter on the ground, flying once a day to a waterhole for water. In the breeding season pairs nest apart from one another, the eggs being laid in a depression on the stony ground. The chicks leave the nest soon after hatching and eat dry seed, the water they need being provided by the male which saturates its belly feathers with water at the waterhole. The spotted sandgrouse is listed as being of "least concern" by the International Union for Conservation of Nature in its Red List of Threatened Species.
The Madagascar buttonquail is a species of bird in the buttonquail family, Turnicidae, that is endemic to Madagascar and a few small islands nearby. It is a ground-dwelling species with an unusual breeding biology in which the sexual dimorphism is reversed, with female being more brightly coloured than the male and it is the male that incubates the eggs and mainly cares for the young.
