I am often asked, “what is your favourite bird”? I see all wild birds as equal so picking favourites is not something I do really- I don’t value one species over another. However there is no doubt that there are some species I go back to again and again when sketching. The lapwing is one such species.
I especially love sketching them in winter, when there is such a multitude of plumages in a flock. The variation is incredible if you look closely. Some have the most spectacular long crests and I have to check my drawing to make sure I haven’t exaggerated! But all have the most wonderful shape with a very interesting head and bill structure and a big eye suited to feeding in low light.
Watching and sketching lapwings in winter is something I look forward to as much as watching swifts and house martins in summer. Their crests can show the current weather conditions, sometimes just lifted or turned by the slightest breeze, or in a gale bent forwards over their heads or turned 90°. An avian weather vane.
They dazzle in flight in bright winter sunshine and then there is the slightly mournful quality of their collective calls. Lapwings are certainly in my top five of numbers of sketches made of a single species. Now those flocks are breaking up as birds return to fields and moors to breed, with many heading back over the North Sea having wintered here. Their plumage is becoming sharper, the males gaining black from the breast band right up to their beaks. Males begin perfoming spectacular display flights over potential breeding areas.
But for me they are one of the birds that keeps me going through the darkest days of winter with their infinite and beautiful plumage variation. As the time comes for swifts to depart I remember that a winter of lapwings is all to come.
All images and text copyright Jonathan Pomroy 2024.
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Jonathan Pomroy 