Nature Notes

The Lapwing or Peewit or Green Plover

In times of harsh weather, such as we are experiencing in this young New Year, our feathered brethren are daily tested to the limit. Feeding methods, evolved over millennia, can now prove decisive to the survival of hundreds of their number. For obvious reasons predatory birds and waterfowl generally hold an advantage over insectivorous or ground-feeding species. (Have the goldcrests and chiffchaffs, espied along stretches of the Tarka Trail over Christmas, come through?  Also the Dartford warblers seen on Saunton Down before the Arctic onslaught?)

• The handsome lapwing or peewit

From the beginning of winter few of us locals can have failed to notice the ubiquitous presence of lapwings in fields bordering our roadways, or on marshland and estuary. Did these handsome green, black and white birds, with chestnut undertail and, in British birds, the unique permanently erect crest, presage the exceptional winter ahead and move downward and westward from mainland Europe in larger than normal numbers? And how right was that observer who described a lapwing flock looking 'like a flickering chequerboard'. As long as the ground remains yielding then the lapwing,  widely known to countryman as the peewit ( in books often called the green plover, describing its upper colouring ) will be able to probe with its bill to find the invertebrates needed for nourishment. But should frost ironbound the soil it will have to look elsewhere. The mudflats and underbanks of the tidal rivers will suspend starvation.

Forty or fifty years ago the lapwing - or peewit as I called it in those days -  was a regular nesting bird in north Devon but 'advances' in agricultural practices ie. land drainage and general intensification - have, lamentably, driven it from traditional breeding grounds. In my boyhood I fondly remember the springtime sight and sound of peewits over a particular rushy field near my home. Now I have to journey to the Exe estuary, where still they breed, to relive and refresh on that special joie de vivre.

In these present conditions however their plaintive cries arouse pity...

• Chestnut undertail feathers of lapwing