Birdwatch: listening to the lapwing’s ‘peewit’ ring out over Somerset Levels

‘Like a patch of oil shimmering briefly in the sun’: male northern lapwing in flight. Photograph: Simon Stirrup/Alamy

At the age of nine, a friend took me to a meadow on the outskirts of my suburban village, and showed me a lapwing’s nest. More than 50 years later, I can still visualise the clutch of four buffish-olive eggs, heavily blotched with dark brown, hidden in a tussock on the ground.

I can’t recall the birds themselves: no doubt they were circling frantically above us, uttering their piercing, high-pitched alarm call. Since then, I’ve heard this sound, often rendered as “peewit” – one of the lapwing’s many folk names – countless times.