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Updated: June 23, 2025
The boys were all excitement now, for they grasped at once the cause of their companion's rapid change of manner. For there in the distance, coming down with the wind in scattered flight and as if labouring heavily to keep themselves up, appeared a flock of lapwings pretty well a hundred strong. "Hooray! At last, Tom!" cried Dick. "Will they come and settle on the net, Dave?"
In the year 1916 an incident of this kind occurred in the meadow to which reference has already been made. The weather had been exceptionally severe very cold easterly and north-easterly winds, frost, and frequent falls of snow had affected the behaviour of the Lapwings, and seemed to have checked the normal development of their sexual routine.
These were as big as lapwings; of a grey colour, black about their eyes, with red sharp bills, long wings, their tails long and forked like swallows; and they flew flapping their wings like lapwings. In the afternoon we met with a rippling tide or current, or the water of some shoal or overfall; but were past it before we could sound. The birds last mentioned and this were further signs of land.
He listened to the songs of larks, the cries of curlews and lapwings and all the other moorland birds, and became as familiar with each of them as they were with one another. But this going to school was a break in his freedom, and it stirred him strangely. He felt already that he would rather not go to school. He had always been happy before, and he did not know what lay ahead.
Here the lapwings, flitting and crying above him, were like to have drawn the English soldiers to his retreat. His wife gave him two great bags, like those which beggars carried; in these he would place the alms which were given to him, and in this disguise he had many narrow escapes. Once he saw some dragoons on the road behind him, but he was too old and too ill to run.
It cannot be merely the presence of a male ready to breed, for then there would be endless commotion amongst the flocks of Chaffinches or of Lapwings which in March are composed of both sexes, including even males that have secured territories.
On such days in July and on any mild misty morning, standing on the mound within the moat I would listen to the sounds from the wide open plain, and they were sounds of spring the constant drumming and rhythmic cries of the spur-wing lapwings engaged in their social meetings and "dances," and the song of the pipit soaring high up and pouring out its thick prolonged strains as it slowly floated downwards to the earth.
The lapwings were gathering in silence, and holding flying drills in preparation for their journey; wad all the strand birds were assembling, in order to take flight together. Even the lark had lost its courage and was seeking convoy voiceless and unknown among the other gray autumn birds. But the sea-gull stalked peaceably about, protruding its crop; it was not under notice to quit.
Some fate, I fear, overtook both starlings and house-martins. Another time it was the season of the lapwings. Towards the end of November , there appeared a large flock of peewits, or green plovers, which flock passed most of the day in a broad, level ploughed field of great extent.
Men like to do all the lecturing themselves, and I find it diplomatic to feign profound ignorance on all subjects, outside of a bandbox; it delights them so to enlighten us. No wonder they fancy us fools when we feign foolishness so admirably lapwings that we are!" "But I never do, in such society. My experience is different from yours.
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