Bog Myrtle & Peat

Before he died, my neighbour showed me where the last lapwing’s nest was laid in the fields beneath his home. Taking a line between ash trees and the end of a blackthorn hedge, he walked me to the very spot where the eggs had been, and I was touched by the care and precision of his sharing. He could easily have told me roughly where it was, or pointed to the field with a loose and general gesture. But he felt it was important to show me in person, and we walked until he could point vertically downwards at the spot as it lay between his feet. I noticed that even after twenty seven years, he still refused to tread where the nest had been. He walked around it several times, and by the time we left, the spot was ringed by a bullseye of dark footprints in the dew.

Lapwings haven’t bred here for many years. I don’t remember them nesting, but I can easily imagine how the birds would turn above the flatlands and the dregs of an ancient watermeadow which lies between my neighbour’s house and mine. The birds have gone, but the broad impression of wet grass and open sky remains unchanged. And knowing where that final nest had been, I’m now inclined to wonder how often I walk in the ghosts of other nests which I was never shown or told about. 

I do what I can for lapwings, but the work is carried out with a kind of resignation. I’m used to thinking about wader conservation in terms of curlews which, once lost, are almost never recovered. But lapwings are more flexible, and they will turn up in new places as the fancy takes them. I’m forever inspired by a friend near Dingwall who created lapwing habitat from nothing at all and was rewarded by birds which came as if from nowhere after an absence of many years. Lapwings work, and there’s a kind of hope for the birds which curlews refuse to accept.

And walking beneath the moon last night in the shadow of ancient memories, lapwings could be heard calling from the fields where the final nest was laid. In a fanciful mood, you could imagine that I was being haunted by the last expression of wishful thinking. But they were calling and flying beneath the stars; at least a dozen birds gathered around a flash of recent rainfall. I got too close and heard them rise, flapping their palms in a whisper of hidden movement.

They often come in the autumn, but it’s rarely in great numbers and never with the tumbling astonishment of April birds. They’re moving around to wintering grounds on the Solway or further south towards Morecambe, and these late season flights are often undertaken in darkness. In a process that is generally invisible to human beings, the landscape is being scoped out and explored by birds in passing – they’re moving south, but they’re also taking readings and assessing conditions for the future. 

When lapwings appear as if from nowhere and lay their eggs in new places, we wonder how they found us. But they’re always exploring, even if we fail to understand the scale and ambition of that work. And there is still hope that what my neighbour described as “the last nest” was merely an intermission, with many more to come.