Robyn Williams: After that story from Paul Johnson you may remember, he came from The Entrance NSW, about a magpie bringing its mate to their shed to get its leg fixed, here's another birdy tale from the west.
Kevin Thiele: I am Kevin Thiele, the curator of the Western Australian Herbarium, part of the Department of Parks and Wildlife in Perth. One morning in spring 2006 I dropped my kids off at their country school in eastern Victoria. On the school oval adjacent to the drop-off point, a pair of masked lapwings (we used to call them spur winged plovers) had a nest. It's quite common for lapwings to put their nests, a scrape in the ground with beautifully camouflaged eggs, in open areas such as ovals and playing fields.
Some of the schoolkids told me excitedly that morning that the chicks had just hatched. Lapwing chicks hatch in a pretty advanced state and are able to leave the nest almost immediately, relying on their mottled camouflage pattern to avoid detection by predators. At the first sign of danger or alarm from their parents, the chicks will crouch and remain absolutely motionless until the danger passes or the parents manage to drive away the predator by aggressively dive-bombing it or distract and divert the predator using a broken wing act.
After the kids all went in to school, I noticed that the plovers were in flight, alarm calling and circling the oval. The reasons was that a pair of Australian hobbies, small birds of prey, were also circling, apparently aware of and searching for the crouching chicks. The adult lapwings started dive-bombing the hobbies, a marvellous sight. But soon the first of two unusual things happened. One of the hobbies turned on one of the dive-bombing plovers and grappled it in the air. Locked together, the two birds plummeted heavily to the ground.
Now, a lapwing is larger than a hobby and would be hard for a hobby to kill. The lapwing broke away almost immediately and flew off in a direct line downhill, away from me, the hobby and the oval. It was trailing a leg, clearly damaged by the hobby attack. After a few seconds the hobby also took off and pursued the fleeing lapwing. It caught up about 500 metres from my position, locked with it again, and the two birds plummeted to the ground a second time.
A few seconds later once again, the lapwing broke from the hobby and took flight, this time back towards the oval where its mate was still circling and alarm calling. The hobby likewise took off again in pursuit. That's when the second and to me truly astonishing thing happened. The lapwing was flying in a straight line towards the oval, the hobby about 100 metres behind and gaining fast. I was standing around 30 metres off the lapwing's direct line flight path. When the lapwing had drawn almost level with my position it suddenly changed course, flew directly towards me and landed virtually at my feet, about a metre away, clearly injured and breathing heavily.
The hobby broke pursuit and rejoined its mate. After a few more minutes of circling, the two moved off and the situation calmed down. The lapwing, clearly aware of my proximity, remained at my feet for a few minutes more until the hobbies were well away, then it took off and rejoined its mate on the oval, damaged and still trailing a leg but alive and able to fly.
Now, under normal circumstances a lapwing would never approach to within a few metres of a person. These were wild birds that, despite being relatively habituated to people (they were after all nesting on a school oval), always remained vigilant and wary, more likely to dive-bomb than to allow a close approach.
I find this event interesting and challenging, and in many decades of birdwatching I've had no similar experiences. I'm convinced that the lapwing was aware of me at the time it's changed course suddenly and landed close by, with the result that it evaded the hobby. The challenging thing is that this couldn't possibly have been learned behaviour, as the magpie story, heard on The Science Show a few weeks ago, could have been. Nor could it have been instinctive behaviour. This would have been an unprecedented and unique situation for the lapwing. You can't learn unique, nor have an instinct to cover every eventuality.
I can only interpret it as a purposeful, conscious, goal-seeking and predictive act on the part of the lapwing, a bird equivalent of the logical chain: 'If I keep my current course the hobby will catch me, if I divert and land at the feet of that human, the hobby probably won't follow. Dangerous as it is to go so close to a human, it's my only choice.' I can find no other suitable explanation.
Lapwings are not usually thought of as particularly bright birds. After all, they are related to seagulls rather than to known smart birds like corvids or parrots. Can a bird brain manage the logic necessary for this to be correctly interpreted as purposeful? That's for others to say. But for me, I'm looking at lapwings with new-found interest and respect.
Robyn Williams: Kevin Thiele, who is curator of the Western Australian Herbarium. Intriguing story. Thanks Kevin.
