As its name indicates the waders They are a group of birds linked to silt or mud, places where thousands of small invertebrates live a few centimeters from the surface. They are one of the most attractive and popular groups of birds in the world, not only because of their ability to travel long migratory distances but also because of the habitats they occupy.
And it is that these birds are excellent bioindicators of the climate changeso the analysis of their migratory behavior can provide us with invaluable information on the effects of global warming.
On the other hand, they are a group of species that are among the most threatened on the globe due to the destruction or contamination of their habitats (deltas, lakes, lagoons, marshes, mangroves…).
Among the best-known wading birds we find sandpiper, snipe, plovers, black-winged stilt, stone curlew or lapwing.
Migratory, gregarious and crested
The european lapwing (Vanellus vanellus), also known as Jewish pigeon, is a species of wading bird belonging to the family Charadriidae and that it has a series of anatomical singularities that make it easily distinguishable.
On the one hand, there are its colors, striking and uniform, among which a white belly, a black chest and the upper part of the blue-green wings stand out. On the other hand, there is its size, which does not usually exceed 31 cm, as well as its elongated and erectile crest of fine feathers that is drawn on its head. Typically, the female’s crest is somewhat shorter and softer in color than the male’s.
The lapwing is a migratory bird that spends the summers in northern Europe and with the arrival of autumn moves south, reaching the Iberian Peninsula. Among Us shows a certain predisposition for open fields and marshy areas, to the detriment of coastal areas.
Typically the lapwing is a gregarious bird, being really difficult to find solitary individuals in our geography. It feeds on all kinds of terrestrial invertebrates, showing a certain sympathy for insects, earthworms and worms. It is a bird that performs complex and striking courtships, including flights with turns and corkscrews, some of which take place at night.
bad weather forecast
Popular culture has associated the lapwing with the arrival of bad weather, with the appearance of gray days and storms, and with the coming of winter ice. However, the reality is very different, the lapwing flees from the cold and approaches more southern latitudes in search of a better climate.
In the province of Frieslandin the north of Holland, is quite a symbol, where it is not only part of popular folklore, but for a long time it was customary for the first egg of the season to be offered as a present to the kings of the country.
Today, fortunately, this tradition has been abandoned, but instead, thousands of volunteers search, at the beginning of each season, large areas of land in search of nests hidden in the ground, in order to place them in an iron structure designed for the occasion. With these programs it has been possible to avoid the destruction of hundreds of nests, many of which would have been accidentally trampled by livestock.