The black-winged pratincole shares the black upperwing flight feathers, and lacks a white trailing edge to the wing.

[citation needed] An unusual feature of all pratincoles is that, although classed as waders, they typically hunt their insect prey on the wing like swallows, although they can also feed on the ground.

The Oriental pratincole is native to Asia, breeding from North Pakistan and the Kashmir region, and sporadically southwards towards the Maldives and Sri Lanka, Indochina, eastern China, Manchuria and the Philippines.

[3] On 7 February 2004, 2.5 million oriental pratincoles were recorded by the Australasian Wader Studies Group on the Eighty Mile Beach in Australia's north-west.

[citation needed] There had previously been no record of such a large number of birds and it is supposed that weather conditions caused much of the world's population of the species to congregate in one area.