The Common Lapwing. 



13- 



that the lapwing is becoming scarce, and the latter have 

 almost abandoned our shores, and, as might be expected, the 

 wireworms seem to be increasing rapidly in such localities^ 

 On opening the lapwings that have been shot, their crops 

 were full of wireworms ; and as it is supposed that one bird- 

 would eat a hundred in a day, the flocks of forty, fifty, and 

 upwards that were constantly to be seen some years since 

 would clear off a very large number in a season. Their 

 assistance, however, is departed and gone for ever, for the 

 high price which the eggs fetch in the market cause the 

 peasantry to look so carefully after the nests, that the only 

 chance that the lapwing has of escaping destruction is to- 

 seek the wildest districts of Scotland and Ireland, where their 

 eggs not being so essential a luxury as they are considered 

 in England, they may escape the persecution they have so 

 long endured. Whether this destruction of late years of 

 whole fields of corn at Oxborough, near Stoke, in Norfolk, 

 is attributable to the absence of these birds, I cannot say ; 

 but it is certain that formerly the plover abounded in that 

 neighbourhood, and now scarcely a pair can be seen.'* 

 Since Curtis wrote these words, in 1845, in the Journal of the- 

 Royal Agricultural Society, the demand for lapwings' eggs 

 has greatly increased, and the annual search for them is. 

 even more persistent than it was fifty years ago. 



