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Lapwing   Listen
noun
Lapwing  n.  (Zool.) A small European bird of the Plover family (Vanellus cristatus, or Vanellus vanellus). It has long and broad wings, and is noted for its rapid, irregular fight, upwards, downwards, and in circles. Its back is coppery or greenish bronze. Its eggs are the "plover's eggs" of the London market, esteemed a delicacy. It is called also peewit, dastard plover, and wype. The gray lapwing is the Squatarola cinerea.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Lapwing" Quotes from Famous Books



... passed away, and he was not disposed severely to censure what could not now be amended. The wily Lady Calista, accustomed from her earliest childhood to fathom the intrigues of a court, and watch the indications of a sovereign's will, hastened back to the Queen with the speed of a lapwing, charged with the King's commands that she should expect a speedy visit from him; to which the bower-lady added a commentary founded on her own observation, tending to show that Richard meant just to preserve so much severity as might bring his ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... fearefull as a Haire, and will lye like a Lapwing,[2] and I know how he came to be a Captain, and to ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various

... cormorants and snake-birds, without any bodies, projecting above water, and disappearing as the steamer approached. Skimmers and thick- billed tern were plentiful here right in the heart of the continent. In addition to the spurred lapwing, characteristic and most interesting resident of most of South America, we found tiny red- legged plover which also breed and are at home in the tropics. The contrasts in habits between closely allied species are wonderful. Among the plovers and bay ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt

... headstone by the church, And all things lived and ended honestly. I could not if I would. I am Harry's daughter: Gardiner would have my head. They are not sweet, The violence and the craft that do divide The world of nature; what is weak must lie; The lion needs but roar to guard his young; The lapwing lies, says 'here' when they are there. Threaten the child; 'I'll scourge you if you did it:' What weapon hath the child, save his soft tongue, To say 'I did not?' and my rod's the block. I never lay my head upon the pillow But that I think, 'Wilt thou lie there to-morrow?' How oft the ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... will among clover and corn, are not at all difficult to approach, and a shot at them through a gap in a hedge will often bring down four or five. Later on the poacher takes them at roost. They roost on the ground in a circle, heads outwards, much in the same position as the eggs of a lapwing. The spot is marked; and at night, having crept up near enough, the poacher fires at the spot itself rather than at the birds, with a gun loaded with a moderate charge of powder, but a large quantity of shot, that it may spread wide. On moderately light nights he ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies

... O shame, unhappy bridegroom, All thy life thou hast desired, 250 Vowed to choose from hundred maidens, And among a thousand maidens, Bring the noblest of the hundred, From a thousand unattractive; From the swamp you bring a lapwing, From the hedge you bring a magpie, From the field you bring a scarecrow, From the ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous

... “The lapwing bird each spot can guard Upon the face of the verdant field, Except alone the knoll whereon Its nest the ...
— Marsk Stig - a ballad - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise

... and our talk must be only of Benedick, and when I name him, let it be your part to praise him more than ever man did merit. My talk to you must be how Benedick is in love with Beatrice. Now begin; for look where Beatrice like a lapwing runs close by the ground, to hear our conference." They then began; Hero saying, as if in answer to something which Ursula had said, "No, truly, Ursula. She is too disdainful; her spirits are as coy as wild birds of the rock." "But are you sure," said Ursula, "that Benedick ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb

... him—leave him—leave him!' screeched Mr. Sponge, trampling over Warrior and Tempest, the brown horse lashing out furiously at Melody and Lapwing. 'Ah, leave him! leave him!' repeated he, throwing himself off his horse by the fox, and clearing a circle with his whip, aided by the hoofs of the animal. There lay the fox before him killed, but as yet little broken by the pack. He was a noble fellow; bright and brown, ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... remains; still on her plumes The teint of blood is seen. Rapid in rage And hope of vengeance, Tereus too is chang'd, And flits a bird; a plumy crest he bears, High on his head: the lengthen'd sword he bore, A beak enormous grows. A lapwing now With fierce-arm'd face ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid

... There was no sound except the munching and snorting of the horses and the snoring of the sleepers; somewhere far away a lapwing wailed, and from time to time there sounded the shrill cries of the three snipe who had flown up to see whether their uninvited visitors had gone away; the rivulet babbled, lisping softly, but all these sounds did not break the stillness, did not stir the stagnation, ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... Lapwing. It floats along in numbers when migrating, the whole flock turning at the same time and displaying either the dark or the white side of their wings with a startling effect. They seem effaced for a ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge

... behind the drapery, which shook and swayed, till the dust fell from it in showers. Again Ralph laughed, "Ah, lapwing, struggle away, ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens

... is dark the night is; I do not see one star at all; And it is dark and heavy my thoughts are that are scattered and straying. There is no sound about but of the birds going over my head— The lapwing striking the air with long-drawn, weak blows And the plover, that comes like a bullet, cutting the night with its whistle; And I hear the wild geese higher again with their rough screech. But I do not hear any other sound, it is that increases ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others

... hundred and fifty-five stories about Suleiman-bin-Daoud; but this is not one of them. It is not the story of the Lapwing who found the Water; or the Hoopoe who shaded Suleimanbin-Daoud from the heat. It is not the story of the Glass Pavement, or the Ruby with the Crooked Hole, or the Gold Bars of Balkis. It is the story ...
— Just So Stories • Rudyard Kipling

... we received the usual insulting communication on a sheet of Charles's own dainty note. Last time he wrote it was on Craig-Ellachie paper: this time, like the wanton lapwing, he ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen

... among the long marsh grass we found the ruddy sheldrake (Casarca casarca), and the crested lapwing (Vanellus vanellus). They were like old friends, for we had met them first in far Yuen-nan and on the Burma frontier during the winter of 1916-17 whence they had gone to escape the northern cold; now they were on their ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews

... have just spoken of, the instinctive courage with which the mother is endowed, you will find to be the best security which could have been devised. In some other birds this instinct exhibits itself in a different way. If you happen to approach the nest of the lapwing, for instance, the old birds try every means to attract your attention, and lure you away from the sacred spot. They will fly close by you, and in an irregular manner, as if wounded; but no sooner do they find that their stratagem has been successful, ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley

... comedy by Glapthorne (identical with The Noble Trial, entered in Stationers' Registers in 1660) Lanch (unnecessarily altered to lance in the text) Lancheinge of the May, MS. play by W.M. Gent. Lapwing Larroones Lather ( ladder) (In Women beware Women Middleton plays on the word:— "Fab. When she was invited to an early wedding, She'd dress her head o'ernight, sponge up herself, And give her neck three lathers. Gaar. Ne'er a halter.") Laugh and lye downe Launcepresado ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen

... goslings keep so steadily in the wake of their mother, that they look as if they were a part of her tail; and both parents, when on land, simulate lameness quite as well as our plovers, to draw off pursuers. The ostrich also adopts the lapwing fashion, but no quadrupeds do: they show fight to defend their young instead. In some places the steep banks were dotted with the holes which lead into the nests of bee-eaters. These birds came out in hundreds as we passed. When the ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone

... turned round suddenly, opened the door, and ran up the stairs rapidly like a lapwing, I after her. Once she turned round, "You shan't come up," said she, and tried to push me back; and then again on she went, I following. I stumbled, that gave her a few steps ahead; I sprang up three ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous

... jumped out of bed, seized a woolen shawl, and wrapped it around her head, and even in that imminent danger not forgetting her most cherished treasure—Cloudy's suit of uniform—snatched it from the wardrobe and fled out of the room. Her swift and dipping motion that had gained her the name of "Lapwing" now served her well. Shooting her bright head forward and downward, she fled through all the passages and down all the stairs and out by the great hall, that was all in flames, until she reached the lawn, ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... The lapwing is a kind of plover, and is very swift of foot. When trying to avoid being seen they run rapidly with depressed heads, or "close by the ground," as the poet puts it. In the same ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... apartment, and is murdered by his mother and aunt. Progne afterwards serves him up at a feast, which she prepares for her husband; on which, being obliged to fly from the fury of the enraged king, she is changed into a swallow, Philomela into a nightingale, and Tereus himself into a lapwing. ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... and was out of the house like a lapwing, just as Tom Ryfe's warlike colloquy with the ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville

... hatching, the little foster-parents have in all probability no suspicion of the trick that has been played on them. Birds do not take deliberate notice of the size or colour of their own eggs. Kearton somewhere relates how he once induced a blackbird to sit on the eggs of a thrush, and a lapwing on those of a redshank. So, too, farmyard hens will hatch the eggs of ducks or game birds and wild birds can even be persuaded to sit on eggs made of painted wood. Why then, since they are so careless of appearances, ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo

... same order, Wild Geranium racing neck to neck with Pas de Charge; the King was all athirst to join the duello, but his owner kept him gently back, saving his pace and lifting him over the jumps as easily as a lapwing. The second fence proved a cropper to several, some awkward falls took place over it, and tailing commenced; after the third field, which was heavy plow, all knocked off but eight, and the real struggle began in sharp earnest: a good dozen, ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... whole domain, And half a tillage stints thy smiling plain. No more thy glassy brook reflects the day, But choked with sedges, works its weedy way; Along thy glades, a solitary guest, The hollow-sounding bittern guards its nest; Amidst thy desert walks the lapwing flies, And tires their echoes with unvaried cries. Sunk are thy bowers in shapeless ruin all, And the long grass overtops the moldering wall; And, trembling, shrinking from the spoiler's hand, Far, far away, thy ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard

... Osiris and the Forty-two judges. It was usually represented as a bird, especially as a human-headed sparrow-hawk. It fluttered to and fro between this world and the next, sometimes visiting the mummy in its tomb. It was sometimes represented as a crane, at others as a lapwing. It is paralleled by the ...
— Scarabs • Isaac Myer

... to turn the laugh against his chief adversary and rival, George Bates of the Eagle, who proposed seeking for the lapwing's nest in hopes of a dainty dish of plovers' eggs; being too great a cockney to remember that in September the contents of the eggs were probably flying over the heather, as well able to shift for ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... resounds through the glen, Ye wild whistling blackbirds in yon thorny den, Thou green-crested lapwing, thy screaming forbear; I charge you disturb ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various

... the Lanius Malabaricus. Kokila is the well-known Indian Koel or cuckoo. Catapatra is the wood-pecker. Koyashtika is the Lapwing. Kukkubhas are wild-cocks (Phasinus gallus). Datyuhas are a variety of Chatakas or Gallinules. Their cry resembles the words (phatikjal). Jivajivaka is a species of partridges. Chakora is the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... aquatic order is that of the Limicolse—snipes, plover, and their allies—which has about twenty-five species. The vociferous spur-winged lapwing; the beautiful black and white stilt; a true snipe, and a painted snipe, are, strictly speaking, the only residents; and it is astonishing to find, that, of the five-and-twenty species, at least thirteen are visitors from North America, several of them having their breeding-places quite away ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson

... for some time. Then she only said "Ask father." And now she was really off like a lapwing round the corner of the barn, and up in her own little room, crying with all her might, before the triumphant smile had left ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell

... the pavilion; but retiring slowly, and often looking back, she could see the young cavalier steal, with the flight of a lapwing, towards the place where he had seen her make a pause. "She stayed but to observe," as she said, "that her train had taken;" and then, laughing at the circumstance with the Lady Paget, she took ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... little larks, The lapwing, and the snipe, And tune their song like Nature's clerks, O'er meadow, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... persecution. The eagles, larger hawks, and ravens, have disappeared from the more cultivated districts. The haunts of the mallard, the snipe, the redshank, and the bittern, have been drained equally with the summer dwellings of the lapwing and the curlew. But these species still linger in some portion of the British isles; whereas the large capercailzies, or wood grouse, formerly natives of the pine forests of Ireland and Scotland, have been destroyed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 531, Saturday, January 28, 1832. • Various



Words linked to "Lapwing" :   genus Vanellus, green plover, Vanellus, peewit, plover, pewit



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