FEa 9, 1883.] 



• KNOW^LEDGE • 



81 



A NATURALIST'S YEAR. 



By Grant Allen. 

 TI.— THE PEEWIT CRIES. 



OUT on the broad downs, where the grass is now growing 

 taller and lusher, and the sleepy beetles are beginning 

 to crawl lazily across the narrow footpath, a sudden cry in 

 the air makes one look up skyward for a second, to see a 

 pair of peewits tumbling and twirling together gracefully 

 overhead, in their accustomed aerial antics. It is early, 

 indeed, for our dappled friends to be out already at their 

 annual love-making. To be sure, we all know that " in 

 the spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest ;" 

 but it is hardly spring, in any fair sense of the word, as 

 yet, and the wanton lapwing is surely taking time by th(? 

 forelock to-day, with too trustful a confidence in the good 

 intentions of our treacherous English climate ; for the 

 tumbling and the crest-growing are all of them mere minor 

 preliminaries to the serious work of mating, and the 

 season is still too raw and doubtful for even the bold and 

 saucy lapwing to confide to it the care of his callow young. 

 All these queer antics of birds in the springtime — the play- 

 ing of capercailzie, the dancing of blackcock, the strutting 

 of turkeys, the tumbling of peewits — are but various modes 

 of attracting the attention of prospective mates ; and they 

 are almost always, if not invariably, accompanied by the 

 presence of ornamental adjuncts, the result of special selec- 

 tive preferences, e.xerted throughout countless generations, 

 on the part of the hen birds. One sees the contrast well 

 exhibited in the cases of the blackcock and the red grouse. 

 The former birds hold their annual " courts of love " with 

 great solemnity, where they display themselves in all their 

 beauty before the eyes of their intended mates ; and only 

 those birds which have the finest plumes succeed in attract- 

 ing to themselves a numljer of hens. Hence the cocks have 

 gradiially actjiured a handsome and glossy plumage, quite 

 different from tliat of their sober and unobtrusive grey 

 little partners. The red grouse, on the other hand, hold no 

 " courts of love," and in their case both sexes are similarly 

 attired in a protective suit of russet brown, which closely 

 harmonises with the tints of the dry heather under whose 

 shelter they skulk and hide. 



Peewits belong by family to the plover group, and are the 

 most ornamental British species of their race. It is the 

 rule with the wading Viirds, among which (though one would 

 hardly think it) the plovers are ranked, to show little or no 

 bright colouring ; and the terrestrial species of waders, 

 like the peewits — in northern climates at least — are almost 

 always very plain, and often dingy birds. Whenever they 

 possess any ornamental appendages at all, as happens with 

 some of the larger and more dominant kinds, such asthe cranes 

 and herons, they take the form of mere crests or top-knots, 

 rather than of brilliant tails, like the peacocks, iridescent 

 necklets, like the humming birds, or brightly-coloured bills, 

 like the fruit-eating toucans. The fact is, the waders are 

 naturally graceful birds ; their slender legs, and tall, arching 

 necks, acquired, of course, by survival of the fittest, without 

 regard to beauty as such, have accidentally coincided 

 with the reqiurements of the highest taste ; and the 

 waders seem actually to recognise this graceful cha- 

 racter of their generic type, and to do their best 

 through sexual selection to bring it out into stronger 

 relief by carefully - arranged additions. Hence the 

 beautiful peculiarities which the females have fostered 

 and improved, run invariably in the direction of decorative 

 tufts or lappets, so disposed as to mark and intensify the 

 natural gracefulness of form so conspicuous throughout the 

 entire race. For example, in the heron we get a brush of 



feathers near the nape of the neck and a pendant tassel on 

 the front of the breast ; in the rufi' we havt; a perfect collar 

 of erectile plumes around the throat ; in the crested crane we 

 find a diiidem of hackles set proudly on the crown of its 

 head ; and in our own lapwing we see the same tendency in 

 the long crest which points so gracefully backward and up- 

 ward in continuation of the natural curve of the forehead. 

 Its contour forrus, in fact, a perfect line of beauty which 

 Hogarth would certainly have included among the illus 

 trations of his law if he had ever seen a peewit stiinding 

 erect beside a stream and paying its court in lordly fashion 

 to its admiring lady love. The crest can be raised or de- 

 pressed alternately at the will of the bird, and it is always 

 displayed to the fullest advantage during the probationary 

 period of the mating season. 



The very name of lapwing, by which the peewit is 

 known to most bookish naturalists, itself refers to a point 

 dependent on, or connected with, the curious aerial love- 

 dances that so remarkably distinguish this pretty species 

 of plover. The wings are extremely long and rounded at 

 the tip, so that they lap over and almost conceal the short 

 stumpy taiL These large and spreading pinions have 

 almost undoubtedly been acquiretl in the course of per- 

 forming the annual love-dances ; for Mr. Darwin has 

 shown that the wing feathers have often been modified for 

 similar purposes in various birds, and sometimes even have 

 assumed a peculiar shape m order to produce a humming 

 noise, which proves as attractive as musical song to the 

 ladies of their kind. There are some distinguished biolo- 

 gists, it is true, who still doubt the efficiency of such selec- 

 tive preferences on the part of female birds in modifying 

 the specific type : but how anybody who has once watched 

 the courtship of the peewits in early spring can have any 

 hesitation on the subject surpasses my limited compre- 

 hension. First, you may see the cock and hen strutting 

 about together on the ground, he elevating and depressing 

 his crest as he struts, and she demurely observing him 

 from a little distance with the critical eye of a con- 

 noisseur in ploverine deportment. Then, after a few turns 

 on the earth, the cock bird lifts his broad wings stoutly, 

 and begins to rise with his peculiar flitting motion into 

 the blue sky above. There he flaps and tumbles in a most 

 demonstrative fashion, sometimes sailing off to windward 

 or leeward, as if to exhibit his address, and sometimes 

 seeming to fall precipitously towards the ground, but 

 always keeping true to the fixed centre where his charmed 

 mate is coyly watching his evolutions with pretended non- 

 chalance. By-and-by he will glide down suddenly to 

 her side with a mute appt^al for applause, and then 

 the two will rise together once more, and wheel and 

 circle in concert till even their powerful wings begin 

 to tire. As they cleave the air merrily, their joy 

 finds voice from time to time in the ringing cry of peewit, 

 peewit; and looking up from below, you see just the 

 gleam of two sailing black and white bodies in the sun- 

 shine, and rejoice with them in your heart that .<:pring has 

 come again. After the courtship, however, begin the 

 more serious cares of matrimony and motherhood, ringed 

 round with many dangers and difficulties for the poor 

 feckless lapwing. Ages ago, when farmers were not, it 

 learnt to make its nest, or rather to lay its eggs, 

 upon the bare ground, without even a few bits of straw or 

 feather to keep them warm ; and it still persists in this 

 ancestral habit among the furrows and ploughed fields of 

 agricultural England. Still, the very absence of a nest 

 makes the eggs all the harder to find, for they look like little 

 round stones lying loose on the soil, and the mother-bird has 

 acquired the cunning trick of running to a little distance 

 away before she rises, with her body tucked close to the 



