Lapwings

Lapwings are true pied beauty. Wonderful though it is to see the first hirundines, which are often sand martins over water, the first lapwings have a deeper magic. Their departure too has a haunting quality, beginning as it does that Lenten period when the last of deep winter is over, but the first of real spring has not begun.
Some years ago, a former neighbour died in somewhat shocking circumstances in midwinter. The lapwings seemed to offer some strange comfort, speaking of a kind of transmigration of soul that I couldn't quite explain. Rather later, an old friend sent me a postcard with an Edward Thomas poem, "Two Pewits", which echoed this feeling I had about them.

Two Pewits

Under the after-sunset sky

Two pewits sport and cry

More white than is the moon on high

Riding the dark surge silently;

More black than earth. Their cry

Is the one sound under the sky.

They alone move, now low, now high

And merrily they cry

To the mischievous spring sky

Plunging earthward, tossing high,

Over the ghost who wonders why

So merrily they cry and fly

Nor choose twixt earth and sky,

While the moon's quarter silently

Rides, and earth rests as silently.