Friday, 9 January 2009

Lapwings

I saw a couple of lapwings at Churchtown this afternoon, in the field where horses graze between the green lane and the cemetery. This is the first time I have ever seen lapwings in Cornwall, and was a great surprise. I wonder whether they are merely passing through, or looking for somewhere to settle.

When I lived on Harris the lapwings were a constant presence day and night - if you couldn't hear them you could see them - and in the nesting season were quite aggressive if you walked near a nest. The only place I have seen them in quantity since them was up at Strensham in the fields there. I thought they only liked flat grassland or arable fields, and that Cornwall would have been too hilly, but the girl I was talking to at Churchtown who also saw them said that she had been brought up in the Scillies and there were a lot of lapwings there.

While we were comparing notes on lapwings, Ty was haring round the fields with her two Borzois. One of them is quite young, although many times Ty's size, and it was comical to watch him being all submissive and puppyish. Ty, unusually for him, was quite happy to play too.

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