Lets focus on...... Lapwings

It is time to introduce a new feature to the blog. Over the coming year we will give a little bit of extra info about some of the wonderful wildlife that makes Frampton Marsh its home. To start with, let's look at one of our most familiar (and yet maybe underrated) birds, the lapwing.

Lapwings are a wading birds, just over medium size, with rounded black and white wings. When they are on the gorund you can see the dark, bottle green back, white belly, black chest and an orangey patch under the tail. The face is black and white, and surmounted by a long black crest. Really quite striking to look at. I remember taking an American lady around to see British birds, and it was lapwings that thrilled her the most.

Not just nice to look act, they can act in spectacular ways too. In the breeding season (ie now) they have a marvellous display flight. Birds soar and plummet in a roller-coaster of romance, all the while giving voice to wild cries of "Pee-wit". Just to add extra impact, their feathers hum as the air rushes over them.

The 'peewit' noise is also used for birds calling to each other, especially in flight. This was therefore taken as an old country name for them. Another name was the green plover. They do belong in the plover family of birds, and their metallic bottle-green backs gave them this name.

Lapwings are often birds of farmland, making their nests in fields where crops are cultivated in the spring. They also like meadows, wet grassland, fens, bogs and marshes. The nest itself is just a shallow scrape in the ground, lined with a few leaves. They like to nest in areas where there is bare soil and only short plants, the better to see danger approaching. The female lays 3-4 eggs, which hatch after four weeks. The chicks are able to walk and feed almost immediately, and scatter from the nest. They reply on camouflaged down to keep them safe from predators such as gulls, herons and foxes. Both parents help raise them, until they are able to fly.

Unfortunately modern farming practices have not been great for lapwings. Crops are now often sown in autumn rather than spring, meaning the plants are too tall for the lapwings to nest amongst. The decline of mixed farms in favour of monoculture has further put pressure on this bird, with numbers cropping by half in 10 years. British lapwings themselves are actually rather unusual, across most of the range they are migratory, making long journeys between summer and winter grounds. But in the UK they tend to stay put, though we do get a big influx every winter from the Continent.

So that is the lapwing. A lovely bird, but one that is currently hard pressed. They are most often seen at Frampton making display flights over the grassland, or feeding on the scrapes or islands in the reedbed. Come and see if you can spot one today!

 Photo by Neil Smith