In April, the lapwings are brooding on eggs that lie in a hole in the grass. That grass can be a meadow, or a tuft in a field that has escaped the plow and poison syringe. While the lapwings were already able to lay their eggs, ruffs are briefly in the Netherlands on their way from their winter quarters to their breeding grounds in Scandinavia and Russia.
The males already moult to their white, brown or black collar with which they will soon be fighting around the hens. Wigeons have yet to start their spring migration. Since autumn they have been grazing through the Dutch meadows.
In the photo, a ruff flies and is harassed by a lapwing. That lapwing may just have eggs and is not served by maternity visits. Everyone is chased away: from crow to hare. This happens in graceful flight where the dark upper and white lower wings provide a light show.
The ruff will probably leave the Netherlands soon. The photo was taken in the Arkenheem polder near Nijkerk. As a child I saw ruffs fighting there. I heard that there were more ruffs breeding than black-tailed godwits, which were also numerous at the time.
Since then, all but a handful of ruffs have disappeared from the country’s meadows. Processed too intensively. The latter handful breed in moist, extensively managed grassland. It does not concern breeding pairs but breeding females; the roosters are too cocky for maternity and brood care.
Wigeons are ducks. In the photo, a faint drake is visible in the background. Such a drake is grey, white, black and pink, with a rust-brown head and a yellow forehead, and a light blue beak with a dark tip.
A widgeon does not croak, but whistles something like ‘peuw’. With us, wigeons are meadow birds pur sang; the fertilized ryegrass is just as nutritious for them as it is for cows. They like to rest on the water. Soon, in Scandinavia or Russia, they will hide their nests between riparian plants.
Three times a week, biologist Koos Dijksterhuis writes about something that grows or blooms. Read his previous Nature Diaries here.