V is for Vanellus

LAPWING (VANELLUS VANELLUS)

Lapwings Vanellus vanellus  are beautiful birds, with a stately figure and sweet rounded face topped off with a whisp of a headcrest. They appear pied, but to call them black and white would be an understatement, since their wings iridesce with green, purple and bronze. A flock of lapwings flashing dark and light as they twist and turn is a sight to behold, and one of my favourite childhood memories was watching these flocks descend on fields in my hometown.

The lapwing’s flight, with sweeping strokes of its distinctive broad wings earned it both its scientific name, meaning a ‘a waving fan’¹ and the common name, from the Old English ‘Hleapewince’ to leap with a waver². Their aerial prowess peaks in spring when males show off in tumbling display flights whilst giving their unusual  call, giving it it’s other common name the ‘Peewit’ (Though I’d personally translate it as ‘peao-wee’).

Lapwings are a familiar site in the British countryside, commonly encountered in open areas from moors and marshes to sheep pasture and ploughed fields.  Here they indulge their habit of plucking invertebrates off the ground, feeding in a teetering motion.

 It seems that lapwings are faring well in Britain, but unfortunately this is not the case. The numbers of adult birds, which live for over ten years, are masking a poor breeding success.

Breeding lapwings need open areas with short vegetation where they can dig a nest scrape and look out for predators, alongside insect-rich areas nearby for the chicks to feed. Naturally, lapwings nest in marshy habitats, but with the take-over of agriculture spring-sown cereal fields became choice habitat, especially in mixed farms with food-rich pastureland nearby. 

In the past, the lapwing had made a success in Britain’s agricultural landscape, but as goes the story for many farmland birds, increased agricultural efficiency and changes in land use have not been in their favour. From around the 1960’s, drainage of wet fields, decreases in mixed farming, ‘improvements’ of pastureland reducing their insect life, and switching from spring to autumn sowing have contributed to a shocking 50% decline in breeding lapwings since 1985³. It is now an RSPB red status species.

Lapwing conservation presents special problems since they don’t always benefit from measures for other farmland birds. For example, hedgerows which provide food and shelter for songbirds also act as highways for lapwing nest predators such as foxes and stoats.  Special ‘lapwing plots’ in cropped fields also benefit  smaller birds⁴.

Lapwings begin breeding in March. The male makes several scrapes lined with grass or leaves and the female chooses where to lay her eggs.  The eggs are a mottled brown, concealing them against the ground and the downy, bobble-headed chicks are equally well camouflaged. Both parents care for the eggs and chicks and are very defensive of the nest. They will give aerial chase to any corvid or raptor that gets too close, and will distract ground predators by loudly calling, fluttering and even feigning injury away from the nest. This has earned the lapwing a deceitful reputation, famously observed by Chaucer who refers to the “false lapwynge, ful of treacherye” in his poem ‘The Assembly of Fowls’, and is established in their collective noun, a deceit of lapwing.

Whilst the adults go on the defensive, the chicks respond to threat by lying low and making like a pebble. If they are discovered, they can run away just minutes after hatching, with the charming side effect of scampering off still stuck with eggshell ². Shakespeare draws on this behaviour in Hamlet, when Horatio refers to young Osric getting ideas above his station “The lapwing runs with shell on his head”. These curiously astute observations of rare behaviour stem from the past practice of harvesting lapwing eggs².

After breeding, lapwings may move about depending on the weather. Small flocks arrive from Northern Europe in June swelling numbers through to winter, whilst British breeders may fly as far south as Spain in harsh winters ^3,5.

History has shown that the fate of the lapwing is interlinked with that of the British countryside. It would be a great shame to lose this culturally and visually enigmatic bird from our landscape. Hopes lie with our farmers and agrienvironmentalists to keep the peewits calling evermore.

References

1- R.A. Robinson. (2005) BTO BirdFacts: profiles of birds occurring in Britain & Ireland: Lapwing Vanellus vanellus   [Linnaeus, 1758]. (BTO Research Report 407). BTO, Thetford. Available from: http://blx1.bto.org/birdfacts/results/bob4930.htm

2- Fransesca Greenoak. (1979) All the Birds of the Air. A. Brown and Sons.

3- Peter Holden and Tim Cleeves. (2010) RSPB Handbook of British Birds (Third Edition). London, A&C Black.

4- D. Chamberlain, S. Gough, G. Anderson, M. Macdonald, P. Grice and J.Vickery.(2009)Bird use of cultivated fallow 'Lapwing plots' within English agrienvironment schemes. Bird Study 56, 289-297.Summary available from: http://www.bto.org/sites/default/files/u31/downloads/details/lapwingsinplots.pdf

5- Peter Holden and J.T.R. Sharrock. (1988) The RSPB Book of British Birds. London, Papermac.