IS THERE any sound quite like it? The sudden, irrepressible cry of the March lapwing pouring out over a lonely field. Yesterday, there was one pair prospecting over the stubble acres, two today. Time after time, I watched their famed aerobatic sorties. Rising to about 100 feet, they would plunge recklessly. Just when they seemed certain to hit the ground, they would somehow pull up and lift again. How different from their more relaxed, indeed downright lazy-seeming winter flock flights, in which lapwings pass overhead like a handful of feathers caught in the wind. In spring, even on the ground this distinctive wader is all wing. Dancing and swaying in courtship ritual, the male flourishes his great white-and-bottle-green wings over the earth as though sketching out the nest he would
06 March 2014, The Tablet
Glimpses of Eden
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