The

Sociable Lapwing is one of the birds that has been on our list for a while, from the
first time we made a trip to LRK more than 4 years ago. There are several interesting
back stories for the reason behind this and we will talk about all of these in detail as we
go along. For starters, it is one of the 16 Critically Endangered birds that one can spot
in India. And, while there have been volumes written about the four Vultures and the
Great Indian Bustard (which have been supported by some semblance of conservation
efforts in the country), there has hardly been much known around this bird.

The Sociable Lapwing is a winter visitor to our country, entering through Pakistan and
across the international borders in Gujarat and Rajasthan. This species had apparently
had a very rapid decline in its population between 1960 and 1987, when its population
halved and it is this decline that prompted the reclassification of the bird from
Threatened in 1988 to Vulnerable in 1994 and then to Critically Endangered in 2004.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List classifies species on
a scale ranging from Least Concern to Critically Endangered, Extinct in the Wild and
finally Extinct. The Critically Endangered (CR) classification is the highest risk category
assigned by the IUCN for wild species. It means that the species population has
decreased, or will decrease by 80% within three generations, based on available data.
These species are therefore considered to be facing an extremely high risk of extinction
in the wild.

The classification of the Sociable Lapwing as Critically Endangered in 2004 kickstarted
interest in this species with the Darwin Project - a joint initiative between the Royal
Society for Protection of Birds (RSPB), BirdLife International and Association for
Biodiversity Conservation Kazakhstan (ACBK) – first attempting to understand the
reasons for the decline in their population. The initial hypothesis was that the cause of
the decline was linked to low-productivity in the breeding grounds due to trampling by
domestic lifestock. However, the data gathered during the research didn’t support this
initial hypothesis and the report concluded that low survival rates on the migrating
routes is more likely the cause.

Its population (in 2006) was estimated to be between 600 to 1800 mature individuals;
some 20–25% of the 1930s population levels. In 2007, about 1500 birds of all ages were
encountered in a previously unknown wintering site in Syria. And, in October 2007, a
superflock of about 3,200 Sociable Lapwings were encountered in Turkey. That’s when
work started on understanding the migration paths of these birds.

BirdLife International, in association with Swarovski Optik and RSPB have been
collaborating, since 2008, under the Preventing Extinctions Program to understand
their migration patterns, using a combination of high-tech satellite tracking and
fieldwork.

The Sociable Lapwings breed on open grasslands in Russia and Kazakhstan. They use
one of two migration routes from their breeding grounds – eastern or western. The
western is the primary route preferred by a majority of the flock, flying across the top of
the Caspian Sea (and as the tracking research shows, sometimes flying right across it),
through their key staging areas in Turkey and Azerbaijan and then onwards to the
Middle East, wintering mainly in North Africa and the Middle East. Until recently, the
eastern route (across the Hindu Kush into Pakistan and India) was thought to be used
by far fewer birds, but the recent tracking research seemed to suggest that the numbers
are larger than previously thought.

We had started following this work over the last 4 years and as we kept reading about
the work, the findings and the inherent challenges in conserving a migratory species,
our interest in the Sociable Lapwing kept growing. During this period we had made
several trips to their usual haunts in Rann of Kutch and invariably returned empty-
handed. So, when we heard that there was a flock spotted around Nal Sarovar, near
Ahmedabad, around mid-December, it was not an opportunity that we were going to let
pass.

Just as we reached the field where they had been spotted the previous day, we were
lucky to see a small flock fly over us and settle in an ploughed field a few hundred
meters ahead of us. We took our time approaching the birds, crawling over the
furrowed terrain with our cameras, and got a first few initial pictures. We spent the
next 90 minutes crawling and edging closer and eventually getting some close-ups.




The Sociable Lapwing goes by the scientific name of Vanellus gregarius. The genus name
‘Vanellus’ is Latin for "little fan", a reference to the sound their wings make in flight. The
specific ‘gregarius’ follows observations of the species gathering in large flocks during
migration, flocks of either the same kind or mixed.

Description - The bird is about 27-30 cms in size and weighs 150-260g with a wingspan
of 64-76 cms. It is olive-brown in colour with a bold, white supercilium which meets at
the forehead and nape. It has a black crown & lores (in its breeding plumage), thin dark
line behind the eyes, the belly is chestnut and legs are blackish. In flight shows brown
inner-wing coverts and body plumage, black primaries, white secondaries and mainly
white rump and tail, with black sub-terminal band restricted to central rectrices. The
female is less intensely coloured than the male, especially on the belly and the crown.
The non-breeding adult, our winter visitor, has a duller head pattern, a buff wash to the
supercilia and pale belly. The juvenile is similar to the non-breeding adult but has clear
buff fringes and dark terminal lines to feathers of upper parts; breast is heavily streaked
dark-brown. The first-summer shows partial underpart pattern of adult.

Distribution - It is found in breeding time mainly on transition
zones in steppes of Central Asia, typically in areas of tall but
relatively sparse vegetation cover to almost bare soil with
only sparse, short grasses, dry wasteland and cultivated,
ploughed and stubble fields. During migration, it is found on
sandy plains with short grass, dry meadows, fallow land and
cultivated fields. On wintering grounds, prefers burnt steppe
and savanna, uncultivated wasteland, dump pastures and
harvested millet fields. In India, wintering range lies in the
north and west of the country, especially in the states of
Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Rajasthan and Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh,
Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra and some parts of
Karnataka and Kerala. The sighting of a decent size flock was,
therefore, an exciting bit of news for us.

Food habits - They eats insects such as grasshoppers, beetles, crickets and moth larvae;
spiders; small amounts of plant material like grains, leaves and flowers. They are
diurnal and foraging behaviour is like that of the other lapwings; making short runs,
stopping and reaching the ground to take its prey.

Breeding habits - They are monogamous and breed between April and June. Before the
start of the breeding season, parties of 5-10 birds land on open fields for display fights
of males in front of females. They are semi-colonial and breed alongside other shore-
bird species like the Collared Pratincole. They nest on bare, saline patches or in short
vegetation, near water and heavily grazed areas. The nest is a scrape on ground, usually
unlined or lined with some plant material, pebbles and debris with the amount of lining
material accumulating during incubation. They lay a clutch of 2-5 eggs. They are single
brooded but replacement brood is laid after egg loss. The incubation period is 28-29
days and is done mainly by the female. The fledgling period is 35-40 days.

I did a physical count of the size of the flock when we were about 30-35 feet from them
and I could count about 67 - but there were probably some that I missed. A Marsh
Harrier then made a low pass over the flock and they all took off. We managed a few
shots as they were flying away and got a frame has the entire flock covered. I could
count 87 Sociable Lapwings in this frame, with the roof-tops of the houses in the
bottom.

One of the key findings from the studies is that the main reason for the decline in their
population is the low adult and juvenile survival, probably due to hunting pressure on
the migration route, and possibly in some of the wintering range states. It is also clear
that Sociable Lapwings are faithful to their wintering grounds, returning to the same
place each year and habitat loss in some of their key staging areas is an added cause.

But, if conservation itself is a tough road to walk, when the target species is migratory
the efforts become far more complex – multiple borders lead to variable legislation and
expose migrants to a wide variety of local, national, and international threats. With the
birds breeding in Kazakhstan and then following two different routes to completely
separate wintering areas across some of the most challenging locations, both
geographically (traversing the Hindu Kush), and politically (travelling through and
staging in conflict zones of the Middle East). – the Sociable Lapwing conservation
journey is bound to be filled with challenges.

However, there have been some great commitment & co-operation in several regions.
For eg., in Turkey, the Ceylanpınar area was identified as a core zone for Sociable
Lapwings to rest and refuel after their long migration across Russia, and Doğa Derneği
(the local BirdLife partner in Turkey) worked to secure a large part of the area as a No
Hunting Zone by working with village heads, the police, and local officials. The
Talimardzhan area on the Uzbekistan/Turkmenistan border is now known to be an
important staging site, with all tagged birds on the eastern flyway stopping there to
refuel before the difficult journey across the high mountains of the Hindu Kush. The
tagging data has enabled lobbying of the Governments into amending the two IBA’s (on
either side of the international border) and giving them a Protected Area status to
better reflect the birds’ use of the site.

Hopefully, the story will continue to score similar wins on international cooperation
across the entire migration path of these birds.

References
1. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, Sociable Lapwing (Vanellus gregarius),
The International Union for Conservation of Nature
2. Conserving a flagship steppe species: the Critically Endangered Sociable Lapwing,
Darwin Project, RSPB
3. The Amazing Journey – Follow the migration of the Sociable Lapwing, a
Preventing Extinctions project of BirdLife International in association with the
Royal Society for Protection of Birds (RSPB) & Swarovski Optik
4. Migration Pattern of Sociable Lapwing (Vallenus Gregarious) in wintering
grounds of Gujarat, India, Lakhmapurkar Jayendra, Deepa Gavali, Sonal Deshkar
and Jagruti Rathod, International Journal of Research in Zoology 2014; 4(2): 29-
31
5. Wikipedia