Success with a difficult lapwing.

Pied lapwing was always going to be a bit of a long shot as far as Wader Quest was concerned. We were just about going to be on the edge of their range, where they are rare, only once. From where we are staying in Minas Gerais visiting family we took to the road this morning and drove for 5 hours in the direction of Brasilia, the country's capital city. We were heading for a place called Pirapora where we had seen this species once before, but many years ago when we had visited the site to look for the endemic Minas Gerais Tyrannulet and Bahia Nighthawk.

Pied Lapwing

As you can see, we were lucky that the birds were still at the same spot all these years later, if a little distant, and it is thanks to Jeremy Minns' site notes that we ever came here in the first place, so this one is down to him! Mind you we were nearly thwarted at the last hurdle. There was a locked gate across the road where previously there had not been one. Some judicious buttering-up of the gate-keeper and we were in.

Pied Lapwing

The first bird we saw gave us a start, a white blob on the water's edge. This turned out to be a juvenile White-backed Stilt, which was a Wader Quest tick too. I shouldn't have been disappointed, but somehow I was.



Juvenile White-backed Stilt

That is until as I was watching the bird another even smaller blob moved slightly to its left. Bingo! It was our bird! Two Wader Quest ticks in the same binful, brilliant!!

Pied Lapwing and juvenile White-backed Stilt

The other two species of wader we saw were the inevitable Southern Lapwings and Wattled Jacanas.

Wattled Jacana in flight