What is the other name for Lapwing? Lapwing, also called the green plover or peewit, is a glossy green and white bird found throughout Europe and central Asia. It is up to 30 cm (12 in) long. On the back of its head it bears a distinctive crest of feathers.
The lapwing lives on marshes, meadows and cultivated land, and by rivers and coasts. During the breeding season males put on an elaborate aerial courtship display, when they wheel, roll and turn in the sky. About four eggs are laid, and the newly hatched young are able to move about on their own after only a few days.
It is during the breeding season that the distinctive call of the lapwing is most often heard, a wheezy, drawn-out ‘peewit’ from which the colloquial name of the bird derives. In the breeding season the lapwing prefers spring sown cereals, root crops, permanent unimproved pasture, meadows and fallow fields. It can also be found on wetlands with short vegetation.
In winter lapwings flock on pasture and ploughed fields. The highest known winter concentrations of lapwings are found at the Somerset Levels, Humber and Ribble estuaries, Breydon Water/Berney Marshes, the Wash and Morecambe Bay.
Once the sole subjects of a parliamentary act. The 1928 Protection of Lapwings Act restricts the taking of the birds and their eggs for food, a practice that had severely reduced populations. Lapwings rear just a single brood of up to four chicks a year, but they may lay up to four replacement clutches if their eggs are lost.
Less than 40 per cent of lapwing chicks survive to fledging. They are particularly vulnerable to predators soon after hatching, when their parents lead them from the nest to suitable feeding habitat. Lapwing numbers fell by 49 per cent in England and Wales between 1987 and 1998 – the result of changing agricultural practices – though the species has fared better in Scotland.
Content for this question contributed by Kelly Lucas, resident of Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, USA
