Red-wattled lapwings live their lives in the open. Every year they nest on the ground in the field next to our garden so I have a very good chance to see what's going on. If I stay alert to their alarm calls I also have a good chance of seeing one of the over-wintering harriers that regularly scout the area. We get eastern marsh and pied harriers and the lapwings hate them both with good reason.
There are many things that could go wrong for the lapwings' attempt to raise their young. There are lumbering cows in the field, passing snakes, fly-overs of crows and inquisitive farm dogs but the harriers are the most serious threat. I often see adorable tiny lapwing chicks running around already capable of foraging for themselves when they hatch, but I rarely see any that have made it to half-grown.
Up until the end of March the harriers fly over the field with their eyes to the ground several times a day. They are fantastic birds, graceful and agile but also ooze menace. Most of the time a concerted effort from the lapwing pair encourages the harrier to move on. Sometimes other nearby lapwings join in and once I saw a harrier only leave a field once six lapwings had started mobbing it. Our local pair of crows also sometimes help to move the harrier along but they themselves would take a lapwing chick if they found it.
A different perspective makes me wonder what it must be like to be a foraging harrier. From every field would come a new onslaught of angry lapwings, crows and other birds. All day, every day, ceaselessly harrassed by desperate parents. The harriers seem immune to much of the scolding, which gives them an arrogance that could just be confidence but is perhaps also the knowledge that fleeing will never quieten the mob that covers every corner of the land. I imagine this would forge sublime skill at judging the balance between scouring the fields despite the attackers and moving on. It would also harden any heart.
Then this year I saw a harrier just across the road pivot in mid-air and dive to the ground. A second later it rose back into the air with a lapwing chick in its claws and flew off towards a group of trees. That was the first one I had actually seen getting caught. Bad luck for the chick as the following week all the harriers had headed north towards their distant breeding grounds. I am sure the lapwings manage to raise more chicks from their second nest in April/May once the harriers have left the area.
Then there are the large monitor lizards that patrol the area and would make short work of a clutch of four lapwing eggs if they found it. Local farm cats also stalk these fields at night. I even saw the local cow-herder step inches from a nest of eggs without realising it. I didn't warn him incase he took them for his lunch.
Dangers around every corner but the lapwings just carry on and do so in an open, noisey way that allows me to know what's happening. Every day I glance over and marvel at the parent stoically sitting on the eggs through the blistering heat of Thailand's hot season afternoons.
Knowing all the characters made creating this artwork very personal. The background is the side of a rusty old storage tank.
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