Spur-winged Lapwing
Vanellus spinosus
- KingdomAnimalia (Animals)
- PhylumChordata (Chordates)
- ClassAves (Birds)
- OrderCharadriiformes (Shorebirds and Allies)
- FamilyCharadriidae (Plovers and Lapwings)
- GenusVanellus (Lapwings)
- SpeciesVanellus spinosus (Spur-winged Lapwing)
About the Spur-winged Lapwing
The spur-winged lapwing or spur-winged plover (Vanellus spinosus) is a lapwing species, one of a group of largish waders in the family Charadriidae. The spur-winged lapwing was formally described in 1758 by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae. He placed it with the plovers in the genus Charadrius and coined the binomial name Charadrius spinosus. He specified the type locality as Egypt. The specific epithet is from Latin meaning "thorny" (from spina meaning "thorn"). Linnaeus based his account on a description by the Swedish naturalist Fredrik Hasselquist that had been published in 1757. The spur-winged lapwing is now one of 23 species placed in the genus Vanellus that was introduced in 1760 by the French naturalist Mathurin Jacques Brisson. The species is monotypic: no subspecies are recognised.
The spur-winged lapwing is a medium-large wader with a 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. It has a loud did-he-do-it call. The bird's common name refers to a small claw or spur hidden in... Wikipedia →
Closest Relatives at Camargue
Northern Lapwing
Vanellus vanellus
Black-bellied Plover
Pluvialis squatarola
Kentish Plover
Charadrius alexandrinus
Common Ringed Plover
Charadrius hiaticula
European Golden Plover
Pluvialis apricaria
American Golden-Plover
Pluvialis dominica
Pacific Golden-Plover
Pluvialis fulva
Black-headed Gull
Chroicocephalus ridibundus
Yellow-legged Gull
Larus michahellis
Eurasian Curlew
Numenius arquata
Black-winged Stilt
Himantopus himantopus
Common Redshank
Tringa totanus
Global Distribution
Where this species is recorded worldwide. Restricted to human observations from 2019 onwards — the same kind of record and the same period the probabilities on this page are built from, so collar-tracking studies, camera-trap arrays and museum specimens are excluded. Around Santa Rosa that removes 5,924 GPS fixes from a handful of tagged jaguars.
where this species is recorded (GBIF density — it tracks where observers go, not how likely a sighting is) · parks where it occurs — tap a pin for the sighting probability there