Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The masked lapwing (Vanellus miles) is a large, common and conspicuous bird native to Australia (particularly the northern and eastern parts of the continent), New Zealand and New Guinea. It spends most of its time on the ground searching for food such as insects and worms, and has several distinctive calls.
The masked lapwing (also known as the spur-winged plover) has carpal spurs. Nesting pairs defend their territory against all intruders by calling loudly, spreading their wings, and then swooping fast and low, and where necessary, striking at interlopers with their feet and attacking animals on the ground with the conspicuous yellow spurs.
The traditional terms "plover", "lapwing", and "dotterel" do not correspond exactly to current taxonomic models; thus, several of the Vanellinae are often called plovers, and one a dotterel, while a few of the "true" plovers (subfamily Charadriinae) are known colloquially as lapwings. In general, a lapwing can be thought of as a larger plover.
The trend in recent years has been to rationalise the common names of the Charadriidae. For example, the large and very common Australian bird traditionally known as the 'spur-winged plover', is now the masked lapwing to avoid conflict with another bird with the same name; and the former 'sociable plover' is now the sociable lapwing.
The food of the spur-winged lapwing is insects and other invertebrates, which are picked from the ground. It lays four blotchy yellowish eggs on a ground scrape. The spur-winged lapwing is known to sometimes use the wing-claws in an attack on animals and, rarely, people, who get too close to the birds' exposed offspring.
They get to battle it out in next week's episode, with season 12 officially ending with the finals on Dec. 18. The Masked Singer airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Fox. Read the original article ...
River lapwing chick found in Jayanti river bed, Buxa Tiger Reserve, West Bengal, India Adults of both sexes are similarly plumaged, but males are slightly larger than females. Young birds have the brown tips to the black head feathers, a sandier brown back, and pale fringes to the upperpart and wing covert feathers.
The bird referred to in English translations of Ovid's Metamorphoses, book 6, as lapwing [28] is probably the northern lapwing. Tereus is turned into an epops (6.674); Ovid presumably had the hoopoe in mind, whose crest indicates his royal status and whose long, sharp beak is a symbol of his violent nature.