Pterocles personatus
Silhouette: PhyloPic
In 3 days ~70% in a week ~90%
The Madagascar sandgrouse (Pterocles personatus) is a species of bird in the family Pteroclidae. It is endemic to Madagascar and is a ground-dwelling short-legged plump bird. The head of the male is brown with a black area surrounding the beak. It has a pinkish-buff coloured breast, a light brown mottled back, brown wings and paler underparts barred with dark brown. The female has a generally duller appearance being cryptically coloured brown with dark specks and bars.
The Madagascar sandgrouse is a plump bird with a short tail and legs and is easy to identify because both sexes have black underwings and it is the only sandgrouse found in Madagascar. The adult male has a brown head with a distinctive black area surrounding the beak and a yellow ring of bare skin around the eye. The mantle, back and rump are blackish-brown speckled with buff. The flight feathers and main tail feathers are blackish-brown, the upper wing coverts being buff and the tail being barred and tipped with buff. The cheeks, sides of neck and upper breast are ochreous to pinkish buff, fading to white on the chin and throat. The lower breast is narrowly barred in dark brown and buff and this barring... Wikipedia →
| # | Park | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Berenty Reserve | 🇲🇬 Madagascar |
More parks will be added in future updates.
No species of the same family or order lives in Berenty Reserve, so these are its closest relatives here: other birds.
Possible
About 30% of wildlife watchers report a Madagascar Sandgrouse sighting in Berenty Reserve on a given day, based on 63 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 30th most-seen of the 63 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 70%, and over a week to about 90%, if each day is a fresh chance.
Between 3 and 6 am
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Madagascar Sandgrouse sightings with a recorded time, and about 6 in 10 of them come between 6 pm and 6 am: it is most active around dawn and dusk.
Only Berenty Reserve, in our data
Berenty Reserve is the only park on Wallace's Line with enough records to rate Madagascar Sandgrouse sightings: about 30% of wildlife watchers there report one on a given day.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Madagascar Sandgrouse is recorded against all the birds logged in Berenty Reserve (63 verified sightings from 2019 to 2026), calibrated against known sighting rates. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10% because citizen-science data supports honest approximations, not decimals, and months with records from fewer than five people show "—". How it works.
