Northern Lapwing

With its upright crest and glossy green and purple plumage, the northern lapwing is unmistakable. Up close it is far more colourful than it looks from a distance. It lives on open meadows and bare, wet fields, where it picks earthworms and insects from the soil. Sometimes it patters its feet on the ground to lure worms up, as if it were raining. During courtship the male performs spectacular tumbling flights on those broad, rounded wings, with a call that sounds like its Dutch name: "kie-wiet". In winter, lapwings gather in large flocks on the fields around Bouin. The useless fact: in the Netherlands, lapwing eggs were so prized that finding the first egg of the year was a national contest; the finder received a reward and the egg went to the queen. Collecting them is now banned.