In the southern part of their range, you can call them either Masked Lapwings or Spur-winged Plovers. In the northern part of their range they are called Masked Lapwings. The birds in the northern and southern ranges are the same species but actually look a bit different and are described as different subspecies — Vanellus miles novaehollandiae in the south and Venellus miles miles in the north. The northern birds have bigger yellow wattles over their face and no black bands on their shoulders. I’ve digitally modified a pic (below) to show how they compare.

Whether you call them Masked Lapwings or Spur-winged Plovers, these birds are not the same species as the plovers in the northern hemisphere.

Digitally altered Lapwing: the picture above right has been manipulated to show the differences in appearance between the two subspecies.

A bit more information about them

The ‘spur’ in Spur-winged Plover refers to a claw-like spur on their wings. You can see them clearly in the photo at the top of this page. The birds have a loud, raucous call which can be heard day and night. They hang around in places like parks and other open, grassy areas where they feed on insects.

Masked Lapwing, or Spur-winged Plover

Looking after the kids

The birds don’t bother with much of a nest, preferring to make a shallow scrape in the ground, usually right out in the open. When the young birds hatch they are cute, downy things with long legs, and so begins a stressful time for the birds as they run from place to place feeding and fleeing potential predators. The parent birds are especially vigilant in guarding their ground-dwelling young and will often take off and swoop at potential threats. Another trick they use is for one of the parents to run off in the opposite direction from the young and then drop to the ground pretending to be injured, in what appears to be an attempt to lure predators away from the babies.

On a couple of occasions I’ve seen the young chicks burrow straight into a parent’s feathers, giving a comical impression of one bird standing on four legs. This is one of many examples I’ve seen to demonstrate a gentle side to these birds, which might come as a surprise to people who’ve been swooped by them.

I’ve never been struck by a Masked Lapwing but have been swooped countless times, especially when a pair of birds chose our backyard as their nightly refuge for a brood of young chicks. They would turn up each afternoon just before sunset, to settle down for the night and swoop me if I stepped outside. Rather than worry about out it, I enjoyed having them around and simply left them alone in the nights for the month or so that they wanted.

The following year that same pair of birds chose our yard to lay their eggs as well, and so I experienced a whole new dimension of swooping whenever I was so impertinent as to step outside the front door. But seriously, it’s not a big deal. And getting to see the chicks emerge and then grow up in our area was fantastic.

Above: A Masked Lapwing nest in the middle of our yard. It was littered with small objects which enhanced the camouflage effect of the spotty eggs. Most of the time one of the birds was on the nest but sometimes both birds would wander off for a feed. When that happened it was surprisingly difficult to see until you were right over the top of it.

Above left: one of the parent birds standing over three eggs. Above right: The scene one month later, with two of the chicks hatched that day. Despite being only hours old, they were already starting to go for short walks around the parent bird.

Above left: One-day-old Masked Lapwing chick. Above right: The nesting site after the birds had moved on. Once all the eggs were hatched the birds didn’t hang around long. I even got the impression they would have left immediately, when I watched the parents using their clucking call to summon the chicks on their way. But the last chick to hatch, barely a couple of hours old, was immediately left behind. It made a very faint high-pitched call which brought one of the parents back to the nest for some more very welcome brooding. Next morning however, the whole lot were gone. They turned out to be good tenants too — leaving the place as they found it and not trashing the place! Even the egg shells were gone.

Four birds. Yep, it’s possible to count four birds in the shot. Hint: one of them wasn’t hatched yet.

Two birds: A Masked Lapwing chick buries itself into its parent’s feathers. I’ve seen two chicks hide in the plumage of a single bird at once and only the presence of a suspiciously large number of legs reveals that anything is going on.

A Masked Lapwing chick growing up. (Size comparisons are approximate) 1: Egg   2: one-day-old chick   3: Age: two weeks   4: Three weeks   5: Four weeks   6: Five weeks   7: Six and a half weeks and starting to make very short flights (only getting a few inches off the ground)

Above: One of the parents runs away from its young and drops to the ground pretending to be injured. This trick is probably meant to lure potential predators away from the chicks.

Above: One of the parent birds swoops straight towards me when I walk near its chicks, in an attempt to drive me out of the area. I don’t deliberately antagonise wildlife but in this case the birds would swoop me whenever I stepped out my front door (which is where I took this photo). If this happens to you, tell yourself that the young birds will be grown up soon and the swooping will then be over.

A Masked Lapwing attacking a Brahminy Kite in the air. The Masked Lapwing appeared to show no fear of the Kite and some of the attacks were so aggressive that they resulted in the much larger bird falling tens of metres before regaining control. I don’t know if that Lapwing was looking after chicks at the time, but the Kite was clearly a potential predator of young birds

When I took the photos of the birds and their young for this page, I used a long telephoto lens so I could keep the greatest possible distance from them. I like to minimise how much my photography affects my wildlife subjects, and that rule especially applies to animals caring for young.

So what’s with this Nature Stuff then?

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