Northern Lapwing, winter roost

Vanellus vanellus

Northern Lapwing · Dungeness · 20 December 2025

Dozens of birds packed onto a single spit of waterlogged shingle at Dungeness in December, most of them Lapwings, the crested, dark-backed birds standing in the front row. Lapwings are waders of farmland and marsh across Europe, and in winter they gather on wet ground like this in flocks of hundreds.

Wigeon are threaded through them, a pair of Shoveler at the back and a single Black-headed Gull at the left in winter plumage. Exactly the kind of dense winter roost a reserve like this exists to protect. The Lapwing was once so common that its eggs were a spring delicacy sold in London by the thousand; the population has fallen by more than half since the 1960s.