RED-WATTLED LAPWING

"THE winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on earth", but the official opening of the vernal season is still months away. And when it does open, it will be very unlike what English poets say it is in England.

'In the spring the wanton lapwing gets
himself another crest;
In the spring a young man's fancy lightly
turns to thoughts of love.'

It is not at all like that here. There is no seasonal limit to the fancy of our young men, and our lapwing has no crest, not even in midsummer when it is the peak of spring in India.

It is different altogether from the English lapwing, though related in a cousinly sort of way. Birds of the same English mane, in diverse countries, are not necessarily of the same feather. The robin, for instance, is a wholly different bird in England, in America and in India - in fact, most countries have their own distinctive robin. The sparrow-hawk, the grackle and the chat may be only distantly related, or even unrelated, to their namesakes in other lands, and I mention these three merely in an illustrative manner. However, lapwings everywhere belong to the plover group.

All of them are long-legged and light-footed, and broad and lazy of wing, though capable of strong flight - it is from their flapping, lubberly wing action that they get their tribal name. But there are several kinds of them in India. The one I term "our lapwing" is the Red-wattled Lapwing, commonest of the tribe, the handsome, familiar "Did-you-do-it?", that is one of the few birds to figure in our legends.

Its call, admirably rendered by the words "Did you do it?" is quite distinctive, even when the black-and-white head and neck, red wattle and yellow legs are unseen. The only other bird for which it can be mistaken from a distance is the Yellow-wattled Lapwing, its younger brother - but the latter does not ask the querulous question, "Did-you-do-it?" as it rises into the air in alarm.

The Red-wattled Lapwing is not an especially sociable bird (incidentally, there is a sociable lapwing); it is usually by itself or with its mate, though as many as six may be seen together on occasion. It is essentially a shorebird, fond of the shingle margins of lakes and drying riverbeds, but equally at home on plough-land and in jungle clearings. It runs easily about on its neat, yellow legs, looking for its living in the sand and shingle and clods. And its knowledge of human intentions is uncanny.

It is noticeably less distrustful of humanity when on plough-land or the bare, pathless throughfares around villages where men are on their own ground, but nowhere does it permit a near approach. Sitting in the open, in a dry nullah, I have watched this bird for quite ling periods - it would invariably take wing in loud alarm at my approach, but soon alight some distance away and gradually walk nearer. But any movement, such as the creeping behind cover of a man with a gun towards duck in a lake or some other quarry, is instantly detected and blatantly advertised - the bird circles above the lurker, brandishing the white bar in its slow wings, as if to direction to its strident alarm. I may be imaginative, but when a lapwing proclaims the stalker in this manner its call seems to me slightly longer and more insistent in each syllable and definitely more urgent - a "Don't-you-see-him?" rather than anything else.

Naturally, shikaris have little love for the bird, and its Tamil name, "Aat-kaatti-kuruvi", is remarkably descriptive - "the bird that points out men", literally translated.

When you see a pair of lapwings on a pebbly shore or field, and one of them flutters right in front of you, be sure the eggs are somewhere near, a clutch of three or four pointed ones, pointed ends inward in a scrape in the earth, and so like the pebbles in their mottled indetermination that you are not likely to see them till you step on them.

Incidentally, you need not look for them where the fluttering bird was - they are likely to be near where its mate was.

Countryside legend credits the lapwing with the habit of sleeping on its back, so that it may catch and hold up the heavens in its feet should they collapse and fall while it is asleep. The legend has been interpreted by scholars as one illustrative of grotesquely exaggerated conceit; their comment is to the effect, "As if such a small bird could hold up in its feet something so huge and heavy as the firmament!" But I believe the legend could be more truly taken as one symbolic of the bird's wariness.

No naturalist can assert that the lapwing does not sleep on its back, for who has caught it napping? At night, the bird is even wider awake than by day, and I should think its sudden call is one of the most reliable of nocturnal alarms, telling the listener that something is moving nearby, unless, of course, he himself is the cause. I have rarely heard the bird when it was quite dark, but when there is moonlight it calls frequently, and I have heard it by such faint light that though I knew from the sound that it was flying directly overhead, may be 20 or 30 yards above, I was not able to see it."
-M. Krishnan

This was first published on 20 February 1955 in The Sunday Statesman

#The coloured and beautiful sketch forming a part of the article not reproduced here.