Abstract

This paper reviews 25 nineteenth- and one early twentieth-century British records of Collared Pratincole Glareola pratincola. It follows the recent acceptance of a British first record by the British Ornithologists’ Union Records Committee (BOURC) from North Meols, Lancashire & North Merseyside, in 1805. Subsequent records were reviewed using the published BOURC criteria for considering historical records and also in the context of potential confusion with the extremely similar Black-winged Pratincole G. nordmanni and Oriental Pratincole G. maldivarum. These two species were not considered when the earliest records were first documented. The analysis presented here, involving the inspection of a number of museum specimens, results in a definitive list of five early British records of Collared Pratincoles, the identification of two new records of Black-winged Pratincoles, including firsts for Britain and Scotland, and a new first Oriental Pratincole record for Britain and the Western Palearctic.IntroductionThe Collared Pratincole has an African and Palearctic distribution (del Hoyo et al. 1996), with two subspecies recognised: nominate G. p. pratincola, which is a migrant breeder to the Palearctic region, from North Africa and Iberia to Kazakhstan and Pakistan, overwintering in Africa south of the Sahara; and fuelleborni, whichis resident from Senegal to south Somalia and eastern South Africa. To date, only the nominate subspecies has been recorded in the Western Palearctic and is the only subspecies likely to occur.Collared Pratincole was first noted as occurring as an extralimital vagrant to Britain in the early nineteenth century (see BOU 2022a). It remains a rare bird, with 106 records up to the end of 2021, and an average of just 1–2 records per year (Holt et al. 2022); spring/summer observations outnumber autumn observations by a ratio of 3:1 (Naylor 2023).