The lapwing's habitat was 'the upland moorland, the wet grassy mead, the marsh...over which it trips and enlivens the solitude with its plaintive cry of pee-wit.' Gould described how in summer the lapwings' eggs were sought by collectors who arrived in great numbers to the nesting sites. The lapwing, naturally distrustful and protective 'employed many artifices to draw the intruder away...it performs many singular and interesting evolutions, tumbling, dipping, and turning with great rapidity.'

The illustration shows a female and her four nestlings, which have distinctive white collars.

DISTRIBUTION: Breeds Palaearctic from Iceland, Faeroes, British Isles, throughout most of Europe and eastwards across Asia to the Pacific coast. Winters from west, central and south Europe, south Asia and Japan south to north Africa, India, Burma and south China. In Britain substantial decline since the 1960s but remains widely distributed