Birds by Land and Sea 



departed. After this, excepting under such circum- 

 stances, we saw only occasional stragglers, or a band 

 flying high and straight for some more distant goal. 

 This latter movement of lapwings occurs during the 

 autumn months, and the lofty, direct flight suggests 

 that the birds are engaged in a regular migration on 

 a large scale. The other movement is a local one, 

 for a snap of frost overnight is invariably followed 

 by the appearance next morning of a large band of 

 lapwings in our fields, where there are usually but 

 few. It would appear that they are the same birds 

 which visit us at such times, for it is always in one 

 or two particular grass fields that they are met with. 

 I have observed that lapwings show a similar pre- 

 dilection for particular fields in the country round 

 about, and in such fields they are always to be 

 found, although they appear to differ in no way 

 from hundreds of similar fields surrounding them, 

 save that they are generally the higher parts of 

 rolling land. 



Although I have never known the golden plover 

 to visit our immediate neighbourhood, flocks of these 

 birds yearly descend about this time to certain fields 

 at Bucklow Hill, some few miles over the Cheshire 

 border. Arriving in summer plumage, they frequent 

 the same rolling grass lands and fallows as the lap- 

 wings, associating in small bands with the latter in 

 earlier autumn, but tending to separate as their 

 numbers increase. By the end of the year flocks of 

 a couple of hundred lapwings are frequently present 



36 



