5 days to go and local lapwing flock

Time marches inexorably on and WQ day gets ever nearer, just five days left, you'd have thought we'd have it all organised by now wouldn't you? Well we are pretty close, but there are still some loose ends to tie up in Thailand.

Yesterday as we were leaving Roade, the village to which we moved to recently, we came across a large Northern Lapwing flock, the weather was dull, it was getting late and it was flippin' freezing with a biting wind but we couldn't resist stopping to scan through them, perhaps we'd find our own Sociable Plover?


The flock in the field

Quick count.

With a quick scan we saw a small number of Eurasian Golden Plovers in amongst them but no Sociables I'm afraid, and then we did a count. The birds were fairly active, feeding and moving around the field in small groups making counting exactly difficult, but there were approximately 200 Northern Lapwing and we counted just 10 Eurasian Golden Plovers.

Two Eurasian Golden Plovers in the Northern Lapwing flock

This morning the sun was shining, so we decided to try and get some better photos, but the flock was gone. We drove around and scoured the local fields but with no luck. This may have been a flock stopping over in the nasty weather on its way south to avoid the forecast cold snap, or indeed we may have a local flock that is just very active and ranges over a wide area, all will be revealed in the fullness of time.