Habitat
Dry ground close to fresh or saline pools, lakes, rivers, lagoons or marshes, burnt grassland, cultivated, flooded or irrigated fields, saltflats by alkaline lakes, mudflats, sandflats, beaches, dunes and coastal saltpans.
Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East up R Nile to central and southern Sudan, and south of Sahara from Senegal through Nigeria to Ethiopia, and south to Uganda and Kenya.
 
Population
Estimated population is 130,000 - 800,000 (2010).
Habits
Outside of the breeding season flocks of up to 15 (occasionally up to 200).
Food
Predominantly adult and larval insects. Also spiders, centipedes, millipedes and occasionally crustaceans, molluscs, small lizards, tadpoles, adult frogs, fish and seeds.
Spur-winged Lapwing (Vanellus spinosus) [XC740156]
by David Darrell-Lambert from Al Bad', Al Bad, Tabuk Province, Saudi Arabia (alarm call, flight call)
Spur-winged Lapwing (Vanellus) [XC425220]
by Frank Lambert from Pirang, Kombo East, West Coast Region, Gambia (call)
Nest
A shallow natural depressions in rock or is a shallow scrape on dry bare ground or on mudflats. In solitary pairs or loose colonies.
Subspecies
Forms superspecies with River Lapwing (Vanellus duvaucelii), with which sometimes considered conspecific.