Northern lapwings are not normally found in the
Northeast, but one recently touched down in Bridgewater, Mass., and became a
star of the birding world.
By Bob Duchesne, Special to the BDN
Posted Jan. 11, 2013, at 4:42
p.m.
This northern lapwing never had a chance. The
world of birding has changed.
It’s a mobile, high-speed, interconnected
planet. Formerly, birding was a solitary pursuit, which appealed to shy,
retiring introverts like myself. When a rare bird showed up, the fastest way to
hear about it was through gossip. Eventually, it might be mentioned on a weekly
bird line or listed in the newspaper. Usually, by the time word got out, the
bird had flown the coop.
No more. Cellphones, text messages, emails,
tweets, GPS and digital cameras have transformed birding into a social activity
— a vast left- and right-wing conspiracy. A century ago, the surest way to
confirm the presence of a rare bird was to shoot it. Many collections of dead
rare birds are still in museums. We no longer open fire on rarities. We merely
surround them and talk them into giving themselves up. “Come out with your
wings up.”
And so it was that that I tracked down this
northern lapwing in Bridgewater, Mass. The bird was discovered shortly after
Hurricane Sandy and has stuck around. It was present during the Thanksgiving
holiday, but I couldn’t slip away because there were precious few hours to
spend with the in-laws. When the bird lingered in its favorite cornfield
through December, I jumped in the car on the day after Christmas and snuck away
long enough to get my lifer.
A northern lapwing is as rare as an NRA bumper
sticker on a Prius. The lapwing is a shorebird in the plover family, common and
widespread across Europe and Asia. It is similar to the killdeer and behaves
the same way, but it is larger, crested and more strikingly colored. Like a
killdeer, its call is a loud and sharp two syllables. It sounds like peewit,
and so is also known by that name in Europe. In winter, it migrates to the
Persian Gulf and areas along the north coast of Africa.
During fall migration, cyclonic storms can
snatch a few of these lapwings off their course and throw them across the
Atlantic. After Hurricane Sandy, one or two were seen briefly in Maine, several
were sighted on Cape Cod, but only the Bridgewater lapwing remained in one
location for an extended period. For me, the hardest part was finding
Bridgewater. Massachusetts is a collection of oversized colonial towns
connected by random cow paths. The addition of pavement has scarcely improved
the road system. Pavement only accelerates the pace at which one gets lost.
Thank you, Google Maps.
