Driving home from town two weeks ago and on the edge of the village I noticed a recently ploughed field covered with birds. At first glance I thought they were all gulls but slowed down and noticed Fieldfares and what we in Suffolk (and some other places) call Peewits, but are properly known as Lapwings or sometimes Green Plover. When I pulled over and got out to take a photo they all went flying off to the other side of the field.
So these photos of the Peewits is taken through the car window and not as sharp as I’d like but you can just about see their wispy crest and the tinge of iridescent green, pink and purple.
As usual I had a look in my book “A Sparrows Life as Sweet as Ours” with illustrations by Carrie Ackroyd, but was disappointed. Usually the illustrations are lovely but this one was a bit of a let down, she hadn’t caught the colours at all.
In my other book with beautiful illustrations – An illustrated Country Year by Celia Lewis – is this below which gives a better idea of the colours – not that I could do any better!
The name Lapwing comes from the noise their wings make in springtime aerial displays. And their call is ‘pee-wit, pee-wit’ which explains that name. They generally live in large flocks, although in declining numbers when it isn’t the breeding season and some are resident with others arriving on the east coast in autumn and winter.
They were once killed for their meat and eggs and selling the eggs was big business until the 1926 Lapwing Act. The chicks can run and feed themselves as soon as they hatch but the adults will defend the young by running off dragging a wing as if they are injured to lure away the predator.
And a poem from Edward Thomas to finish
Two Pewits
Under the after-sunset sky
Two pewits sport and cry,
More white than is the moon on high
Riding the dark surge silently;
More black than earth. Their cry
Is the one sound under the sky.
They alone move, now low, now high,
And merrily they cry
To the mischievous Spring sky,
Plunging earthward, tossing high,
Over the ghost who wonders why
So merrily they cry and fly,
nor choose ‘twixt earth and sky,
While the moon’s quarter silently
Rides, and earth rests as silently.
Back Tomorrow
Sue
