THE LAPWING. s s 



Family CHARADR1ID/E. 



LAPWING. 



Vaiiellus vulgaris, BECHST. 



THE Lapwing (? flap-wiug), Peewit (from its cry), or Green Plover (from the 

 bronzy green sheen on the back), is about the best known of the Limicola 

 in the old world north of the Equator. Its breeding range extends from the 

 Atlantic to the Pacific, up to the Arctic Circle in Europe, up to lat. 53 in Asia. 

 North of the Baltic it is a summer visitor only, but is resident in our country 

 and in central Europe. Southwards it breeds down to Spain and even North 

 Africa. To Iceland it is only a rare straggler, but in the Faeroes, though rare, 

 it breeds, and I have an egg given to me by the late Sysselmand Miiller. South 

 of the Himalayas it is a winter visitor only (though the eggs are said to have 

 been taken in the Punjab by Theobald), as also in China. In Asia Minor, Palestine, 

 Arabia, North Africa (with the exceptions mentioned above), the Canaries and 

 Azores, it is a winter visitor also. It occasionally strays to the New World, has 

 been recorded from Greenland and Alaska, and a straggler was shot in Barbadoes 

 (Feilden). 



Description of the adult male (Northumberland, 23, 4, 78) : bill black ; iris 

 dark umber ; crown and long crest, back and wings, brown, approaching to black, 

 with a greenish or purplish reflection, according to the way the light falls ; nape, 

 cheeks, sides of head and neck, white, speckled with black ; primaries black, with 

 a dull white patch near the end of the first four (sometimes three only) ; second 

 and third primaries equal and longest, but only by a little, and the wing is very 

 blunt-ended ; tail white, with black tips to all but the outer pair of feathers ; chin, 

 throat, and breast, black; rest of under parts white, excepting the tail-coverts, 

 which are chestnut, as are also those above the tail ; feet and legs reddish ; claws 

 black; hind toe very small. Length 12-13 inches; wing Sf-g. In winter the 

 throat and chin turn white. The female is duller in tints, has a much shorter 

 crest, and some white feathers in the black chin and throat. 



Young birds have no black on chin and throat ; the white of the head is 

 tinged with buff, and the feathers of the back and wing-coverts are tipped with 

 the same colour. 



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