Laconic lapwings

Val delights in the languid flight of flocks of lapwings

- Val Bourne

ALTHOUGH I grew up in a built-up West London suburb in the 1950s, I used to see flocks of lapwings on low-lying fields that were too wet to build on. I can still recall watching their lazy flight and it always seemed to me that their wings were beating far too slowly for their own good. They billowed through the sky, as if a conductor’s hand were directing a slow movement from behind the clouds. Their Latin name, Vanellus vanellus, translates as ‘little fan’, and they do waft through the air in a very laconic style.

You might know these birds as peewits, an onomatopoeic name that describes their high call. They’re also called green plovers, because they’re wading birds. Like many of the common birds of my youth, lapwings have declined so much that they are now on the Red List of threatened species. It’s been estimated that numbers in England and Wales fell by 49% between 1987 and 1998. This is thought to have been caused by farmers tending to sow their crops in autumn rather than spring. By the time the lapwings breed, the vegetation is already too high for them to make their shallow scrape into the soil.