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) [XC515847]
by Louis A. Hansen from Kilombero river (sailing on the river), near Ifakara bridge, Ulanga, Morogoro Region, Tanzania (call)
Spur-winged Lapwing (Vanellus) [XC775698]
by S\u0142awomir Karpicki-Ignatowski from Sakumono, Tema Metropolitan, Greater Accra Region, Ghana (alarm 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.