British wildlife recordings
Vanellus vanellus : Lapwing - Charadriidae
- Add a note
Log in to add a note at the bottom of this page.
- All notes
- My notes
- Hide notes
- Add to playlist
Log in to add this item to one of your personal lists.
- Add to favourites
Log in to add and display this item in your personal list of favourites on the right hand side of this page.
The British Library Board acknowledges the intellectual property rights of those named as contributors to this recording and the rights of those not identified.
Legal and ethical usage »
Type
sound
Duration
Unknown
Shelf mark
W1CDR0001471 BD4
Subjects
Birds
Recording date
1980/04/13
Recording locations
Frensham Great Pond, Surrey: OS Grid Reference(484500,140500)
Recordist
Williams, Aubrey John
Species
Lapwing, Vanellus vanellus
Description
The call of the lapwing, recorded at Frensham Great Pond in Surrey. The lapwing is a distinctive-looking wader with very broad, rounded black and white wings, a dark green back, and an upward pointing crest on the back of the head. It is found over much of Britain, commonly breeding on farmland, pasture, and wet grassland. During the early part of the breeding season, birds can be seen engrossed in complex display where the male will fly over its territory slowly, climb suddenly, then tumble downwards with its wings making a humming sound. It is during the breeding season that the distinctive call of the lapwing is most often heard, a wheezy, drawn-out 'peewit' from which the colloquial name of the bird derives. In autumn, the lapwing congregates on fields in large flocks, numbers often being swelled by additional birds from the continent to feed on a variety of invertebrates including earthworms, wood-lice, and caterpillars. The lapwing has undergone a recent decline in numbers, falling by fifty per cent in the last decade, due to changes in farming practice and draining of wet meadows where it traditionally breeds. There is currently a breeding population of 240,000 pairs, but in winter over 2,000,000 birds are recorded.
Metadata record: