THE LAPWING 383 



quietly again. I have seen one that was partly feathered crouch, but 

 at this age they have generally outgrown the habit. 



It has often been said of the lapwing that it resorts to the " injury 

 feigning " display to save its eggs or young. Personally I have never 

 yet seen the slightest display of this kind. I would not, however, on 

 that account describe the belief as a " popular fallacy," as was done in 

 the Zoologist for 1897, p. 473. The habit occurs no doubt, but rarely, 

 and in a later number of the same magazine Mr. Bernard B. Riviere 

 records seeing two lapwings " feigning injury," running with drooping 

 wings, and occasionally toppling over on to one shoulder, with wings 

 flapping feebly. When approached they flew up. 1 In this case the 

 birds had young. A lapwing flushed from the nest has been observed 

 to display. 2 



Lapwings are exceedingly bold in attacking and mobbing hawks, 

 crows, or rooks venturing near their nesting-grounds. One may often 

 see a solitary crow, apparently doing nothing more offensive than 

 taking a short cut home across a piece of fen country where lapwings 

 are nesting. Until clear of the breeding-grounds, his course is marked 

 by sorties against him by angry lapwings. Flying suddenly up from 

 the ground, a lapwing chases and buffets at him, the crow dodging to 

 avoid the blows and endeavouring to maintain his course. No sooner 

 has one lapwing turned back, than up flies another, and so on, each 

 one as it were conducting the crow to the frontier of its own 

 domain, and handing him over to its nearest neighbour. But their 

 resentment is not only against species which may with reason be 

 suspected of predaceous intent They appear to have quite an 

 unreasonable objection to partridges. Several instances have been 

 recorded in which lapwings have attacked and driven partridges from 

 their nesting-grounds. 3 A contributor to the Field related how 

 a blackheaded-gull was mobbed almost to death by lapwings. 4 They 

 will also attack cattle ; in an encounter with a cow, one is said to have 



1 Zoologist, 1902, p. 29. * Ibid., 1897, p. 515. 



3 Field, 1903, vol. ci. p. 950; Ibid., 1904, vol. ciii. p. 861. 



4 Ibid., 1904, vol. ciii. p. 861. 



