Oriental Pratincole

The Oriental pratincole has short legs, long pointed wings and a long forked tail, and a short bill that is an adaptation to aerial feeding. The back and head are brown and the wings brown with black flight feathers, while the belly is white and the underwings chestnut. Very good views are needed to tell it from other pratincoles, particularly the very similar collared pratincole, which also has a chestnut underwing. The black-winged pratincole shares the black upperwing flight feathers but lacks a white trailing edge to the wing. (Wikipedia, general species account)

Also known as the grasshopper-bird or swallow-plover, it is a wader in the pratincole family. It is native to Asia, breeding from northern Pakistan and Kashmir, and sporadically south towards the Maldives and Sri Lanka, in Indochina, eastern China, Manchuria and the Philippines. It is migratory, wintering throughout the Indomalayan realm and northern Australia, and lays two or three eggs on the ground. (Wikipedia, general species account)