Oriental pratincole Oriental pratincole The oriental pratincole ("Glareola maldivarum"), also known as the grasshopper-bird or swallow-plover, is a wader in the pratincole family, Glareolidae. The genus name is a diminutive of Latin "glarea", "gravel", referring to a typical nesting habitat for pratincoles. The species name "maldivarum" refers to the type locality, the ocean near the Maldive Islands; the type specimen, caught alive at sea, survived for a month on flies. These birds have short legs, long pointed wings and long forked tails. They have short bills, which is an adaptation to aerial feeding. The back and head are brown, and the wings
Oriental pratincole are brown with black flight feathers. The belly is white. The underwings are chestnut. Very good views are needed to distinguish this species from other pratincoles, such as the very similar collared pratincole, which also has a chestnut underwing, and black-winged pratincole which shares the black upperwing flight feathers and lack of a white trailing edge to the wing. These features are not always readily seen in the field, especially as the chestnut underwing appears black unless excellent views are obtained. An unusual feature of all pratincoles is that although classed as waders they typically hunt their insect prey on