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African wattled lapwing

species of bird

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionOct 1, 2025
Entity authorityQ875949
Source-derived summary

The African wattled lapwing (Vanellus senegallus), also known as the Senegal wattled plover or simply wattled lapwing, is a large lapwing, a group of largish waders in the family Charadriidae. It is a resident breeder in most of sub-Saharan Africa outside the rainforests, although it has seasonal movements.

These are conspicuous and unmistakable birds. They are large brown waders with a black crown, white forehead and large yellow facial wattles. The tail is white, tipped black, and the long legs are yellow.

In flight, the upperwings have black flight feathers and brown coverts separated by a white bar. The underwings are white with black flight feathers. The African wattled lapwing has a loud peep-peep call.

This species is a common breeder in wet lowland habitats, especially damp grassland. It often feeds in drier habitats, such as golf courses, picking insects and other invertebrates from the ground.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “African wattled lapwing” is species of bird. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through African, wattled and lapwing, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical orientation to terminology and classification, particularly when read beside dated observations, specimens or technical literature. The current 146-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, African, wattled and lapwing is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “species of bird” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 1, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q875949. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.

Critical limits

Current terminology should not be projected backward without checking the classification used when the underlying evidence was created. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “African wattled lapwing”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow African wattled lapwing primary sources, African wattled lapwing archive and African research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from African wattled lapwing” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.