White-tailed Lapwing

The white-tailed lapwing, or white-tailed plover, is a medium-sized, long-legged and fairly long-billed lapwing. Adults are slim, erect birds with a brown back and foreneck, a paler face and a grey breast, and the long yellow legs, pure white tail and distinctive brown, white and black wings make it unmistakable. Young birds have a scaly back and may show some brown in the tail. The breeding call is a peewit like the northern lapwing's (Wikipedia, general species account).

It breeds semi-colonially on inland marshes in Iraq, Kuwait, Iran and southern Russia; the Iraqi and Iranian breeders are mainly resident, but Russian birds migrate south in winter to the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East and north-east Africa. It is the only lapwing likely to be seen in other than very shallow water, picking insects and other small prey mainly from the surface. Four eggs are laid in a ground nest. SoIB 2023 rates it a Moderate conservation priority, a winter migrant of wetland with a rapid long-term decline of about 70% (Wikipedia, general species account; SoIB 2023).