The Lapwing's Eggs
12 September 2001
(rev. 20080209)
Four Lapwing's eggs were lying in front of my feet, on the
short grass.
Broken!
It looked like someone had accidentally stepped on them, only
moments ago.
So well were they camouflaged, that you would not know they
were there:
Sprinkled brown patches on dark green, outlined into
shapes of somewhat pointed eggs.
They have the same light-absorbing quality as the grass
surrounding them, a soggy pasture that had no cows
grazing on it in this late day of spring.
But I knew the eggs should be there ...exactly there.
Four freshly planted bird lives:
Gracious and charming Lapwings as they prance in the air;
the noisy Pewit - as they are also called, by their music:
'Pea ...hwit!'
What would the parents 'in spe' feel,
['in spe' from French - "in hope" - hoping to become parents]
when they find their joy of creating new life, their offspring,
aborted so cru****ngly?
A compassionate feeling of loss overcame me,
as the loss of a beloved pet animal would bring,
by my experiencing the irreversible destruction of these
future lives.
The Lapwings - or Pewits - *(0) making their summersaults in
the air, had always been the companions of happy memories,
throughout the many warm springs and summers that I spent
sailing - like the birds were too, surrounded by the sun
and the clouds - on the lakes by the flat grassland, the
low dikes, the slowly turning windmills and the calmly
munching cows.
The warm sunlight made the grass of the pasture smell
differently.
I had landed my sailing boat there, to find a Pewit's nest.
This is what I knew:
The brooding Pewit lands far away from his nest to keep
its location hidden, and then he does not fly back to it,
but he walks back to it.
And he does only walk back to his nest, when the hunter
has disappeared out of sight.
But the bird flies up immediately when he sees danger
appearing from far - he is not walking away from it, but
he is directly flying up from the location of the
nest, to be away as soon as possible, and thus not
to show the location of the nest to still distant
predators, to hunters.
I hid behind the dike,
that runs like a stretched-out hill to stop the lake from
flu****ng the land,
and I waited for the Lapwing to declare his brooding area safe,
and for him to walk back to his nest.
And then, when suddenly I raised my head above the dike, indeed
the bird shot up into the air
- and I marked the imaginary line to the nest's location.
The line exactly pointed out the direction to walk to the nest.
Following it would inevitably bring me there.
And along that line I walked.
All the way to the opposite dike enclosing the grassland of
the 'polder'
(a 'polder,' as it is called in Holland when a dike
surrounds the land, so that you can pump the water out
and have dry land).
All along the imaginary line I walked, but no nest!
I returned to my original point, checked that I had indeed
followed my line correctly, and walked it again, keeping my
eyes firmly on the grass directly in front of me.
This time, the nest was there. But the eggs were stepped on,
broken very recently, and there were no cows around to have
done so.
I wanted to find a Pewit's nest...
The eggs were so well camouflaged,
they were hidden from sharp eyes,
even when knowing where to look.
Koos Nolst Trenite "Cause Trinity"
human rights philosopher and poet
________
Footnote:
*(0) The scientific name of the Lapwing or Pewit, is
'Vanellus vanellus.'
In some other languages, the bird is called
Kievit (Dutch)
Vanneau huppe (French)
Avefria (Spanish)
Pavoncella (Italian)
Tseehbees (Russian)
Kiebitz (German)
__________
References [updated]:
- 'Love On The Bridges Of Holland'
(18 Sept 2002 - Version 2.3 on 5 July 2007)
http://groups.google.com/group/nl.politiek/msg/4e3355282ca6682b
- 'The Trinity Of Science - Truth, Love and Beauty'
{HRI 20030307-pi-1-V2.1}
(7 Mar 2003 - Version 2.1 on 17 Oct 2003)
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.europe/msg/bd379f557a773729
'
Copyright 2003 by Koos Nolst Trenite - human rights philosopher
and poet
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