Black-headed Lapwing
Vanellus tectus
An attractive lapwing with a black-and-white head, a brown back, and pale underparts. There is a thin black crest and a black line down the center of the breast. In flight, reveals broad white bands across the wings. Found in dry savanna habitats. Mostly active at night, early in the morning, and late in the day. Often in pairs or small groups. Not easily confused with other lapwings. The call is a strident, wooden, repeated “krep.”
Taxonomy
The black-headed lapwing was described by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in 1781 in his Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux from a specimen collected in Senegal. The bird was also illustrated in a hand-coloured plate engraved by François-Nicolas Martinet in the Planches Enluminées D'Histoire Naturelle which was produced under the supervision of Edme-Louis Daubenton to accompany Buffon's text. Neither the plate caption nor Buffon's description included a scientific name but in 1783 the Dutch naturalist Pieter Boddaert coined the binomial name Charadrius tectus in his catalogue of the Planches Enluminées. The black-headed lapwing is now placed in the genus Vanellus that was erected by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson in 1760. The generic name Vanellus is the Medieval Latin for a "lapwing". It is a diminutive of the Latin vanus meaning "winnowing" or "fan". The specific epithet tectus is Latin for "covered" (i.e. blackcrowned).<p>Two subspecies are recognised:
- Scientific name
- Vanellus tectus
- Authority
- (Boddaert, 1783)
- Order
- Charadriiformes
- Family
- Charadriidae
- Genus
- Vanellus
Range and habitat
- Migration
- Resident species
Conservation
- Population trend
- unknown
Photos
Distribution
Bird Calls
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