Williamson's Weekly Nature Notes

IN Brideshead Revisited, Sebastian Marchmain received his parcel of hard-boiled plovers' eggs at university, telling his friend Charles that "they always lay early for mummy", though it's possible the big mottled brown eggs might actually have been black-headed gulls' eggs without anyone knowing.

By The Newsroom

Published 13th Oct 2008, 17:22 BST

Updated 8th Jun 2018, 03:23 BST

Gulls are still 'farmed' on some Scottish nature reserve to supply the tables of the discerning egg eaters. Plovers' eggs are most definitely not any more, except illegally.

Where has the 'farmers' friend' gone these days? Peewits used to nest on all the cereal fields and meadows over the downs. But the green plover, to give it its other name, has vanished from many breeding sites where once it was common a century ago.

But then, stone curlews, which are also called Norfolk plovers, have gone as well from our downs, and so have common curlews.

The peewit had another name among Sussex herdsmen and shepherds on the downs, and that was bullock-a-week, which describes its sweet courtship song as it dives in aerial display to its mate. That is a sound I miss very much in March and April.

For full feature see West Sussex Gazette October 15