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Masked Lapwing
Scientific Name: Vanellus miles
Description: Masked Lapwings are large, ground-dwelling birds that are closely related to the waders. The Masked Lapwing is mainly white below, with brown wings and back and a black crown. Birds have large yellow wattles covering the face, and are equipped with a thorny spur that projects from the wrist on each wing. The spur is yellow with a black tip. The Masked Lapwing has two subspecies resident in Australia. The southern subspecies has black on the hind neck and sides of breast, and has smaller facial wattles. Northern birds are smaller, without the partial black collar, but have a much larger wattle, which covers most of the side of the face. The sexes are similar in both subspecies, although the male tends to have a larger spur. Young Masked Lapwings are similar to the adult birds, but may have a darker back. The wing spur and facial wattles are either absent or smaller in size. The southern subspecies is also known as the Spur-winged Plover.
Similar species: The Banded Lapwing, V. tricolor, is much smaller (25 cm to 29 cm). It has a mostly black head and upper breast, with a distinct white eyestripe and bib. It also has a distinctive red patch at the base of the bill.
Distribution: The Masked Lapwing is common throughout northern, central and eastern Australia. Masked Lapwings are also found in Indonesia, New Guinea, New Caledonia and New Zealand. The New Zealand and New Caledonian populations have been formed from birds that have flown there from Australia.
Habitat: The Masked Lapwing inhabits marshes, mudflats, beaches and grasslands. It is often seen in urban areas. Where this bird is used to human presence, it may tolerate close proximity; otherwise it is very wary of people, and seldom allows close approach.
Feeding: Masked Lapwings feed on insects and their larvae, and earthworms. Most food is obtained from just below the surface of the ground, but some may also be taken above the surface. Birds are normally seen feeding alone, in pairs or in small groups.
Breeding: Masked Lapwings may breed when conditions are suitable. Both sexes share the building of the nest, which is a simple scrape in the ground away from ground cover. This nest is often placed in inappropriate locations, such as school playing fields or the roofs of buildings. Both sexes also incubate the eggs and care for the young birds. The young birds are born with a full covering of down and are able to leave the nest and feed themselves a few hours after hatching.
The Masked Lapwing is notorious for its defence of its nesting site. This is particularly the case after the chicks have hatched. Adults will dive on intruders, or act as though they have a broken wing in an attempt to lure the intruder away from the nest.
Minimum Size: 33cm
Maximum Size: 38cm
Average size: 36cm
Breeding season: At any time of the year
Clutch Size: 3 to 5
(Source: www.bridsinbackyards.net)
© Chris Burns 2018
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This image may not be copied, reproduced, distributed, republished, downloaded, displayed, posted or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic, mechanical, photocopying and recording without my written consent.
i felt like such a tourist taking pictures of the empire state building...*sigh*
but i liked the fog too much to pass up.
EDIT: i AM a new yorker.
Saw my first scrape activity early this morning. Haven't see this 8-point buck before. Here he is rubbing scent on branches above the scrape. Then he scraped the are with his front feet and urinated down his legs to place his mark. Our beautiful world, pass it on.
Remembering Selma Huxley Barkham: friend, historian and geographer.
Selma was an extremely loving and talented woman and through her research added a great deal to Canadian History. You can read more about her amazingly interesting life here in a tribute to her by her daughter, Oriana Barkham Huxley and granddaughter, Serena Barkham:
ON INTERNATIONAL WOMEN"S DAY & HER BIRTHDAY:
Remembering Selma Huxley Barkham: historian and geographer specialising in Basque connections to Canada
by Oriana and Serena Barkham
The yellow tent was up and straining on its guy ropes in the Labrador wind. The black flies were viciously biting. Rain poured down. They were cold and soaked to the bone. But Selma Huxley Barkham, with her two youngest children in tow, was ecstatically happy. She had found what she was looking for: eroded pieces of red roofing tiles scattered on the shores, in vegetable patches and in gardens.
The locals called the red tile ‘red rock’, and some, as children, had used it to write on school slates. But Selma knew that the tiles had been brought in ships across the Atlantic from the Basque Country in the sixteenth century. On the way over to Terranova, the New Found Land, the tiles were used as ballast. On the return journey, the ships hulls were filled with barrels of whale oil, and sometimes with dried or green salted cod. The tiles were left in Terranova where they were used to construct roofs over shelters, and the ovens where whalers boiled down whale oil.
Selma now knew her excursion to Labrador in the summer of 1977, funded by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, to identify Basque whaling sites in the 1500s & 1600s, was a success. In each port she had so painstakingly identified as having been used by the Basques in the 16th and 17th centuries, she had found tiles. Years of interest, meticulous research, and gruelling hours in archives had brought her here.
Selma’s first awareness of the Basques was as a child in the 1930s, when she and her brother Thomas were given a cesta punta, a curved wicker-work basket worn on the hand, to play the world’s fastest game, Jai Alai. Rodney Gallop, a friend of her parents and author of a still seminal book on the Basques, had brought the cesta puntas to their home in Bosham Hoe, Sussex. Selma also knew her father Michael Huxley, founder of Geographical magazine, had studied Spanish in San Sebastian/ Donosti. And her family were aware of the Basque children brought over to Southampton, some ending up in Hayling Island near Selma’s family home, fleeing the violent Spanish Civil War in 1937.
As a young adult in the early 1950s, while working as the librarian of the Arctic Institute of North America at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, Selma fell in love with Brian Barkham. An architect from Bartlett’s, University College London, he was at McGill doing an MA in French Canadian rural architecture. His undergraduate thesis had been on rural architecture in the Basque Country. Brian took Selma to Euskadi/The Basque Country for a late honeymoon in 1956, introducing her to friends there. Among these was the priest Don Pio de Montoya who told her about the Basque fishermen who had been going to what is now Canada for centuries. When Brian died tragically at the age of 35, leaving Selma a widow with four children between the ages of two and nine, she started working for Historic Sites Canada. One of the projects she worked on was the French Fort in Cape Breton, Louisbourg. Some of the documents from the 18th century related to a French Basque merchant’s house, Lartigue.
Selma’s health suffered during Canada’s six-month-long winters. She developed recurring pneumonia. In 1969, the idea of searching for more on the Basque seafarers’ connections to Canada, led her to move to Mexico. It was cheap, warm, and there she, and her children, could learn Spanish, which was essential if she were to carry out research on documents in Spain. To survive, Selma found herself a job teaching English at The British Council School in Guadalajara. After three years in Mexico, she took her four children by boat across the Atlantic, on a half cargo, half passenger ship – the Covadonga – to Bilbao. There was a short stop in Miami to avoid the worst of a hurricane. Arriving in the Basque Country, Selma had no income, no job and four children, but she was determined to try and find out about these Basques who had been to Canada.
From Mexico, she had booked the family into a hostel in the older quarter of Bilbao, as it was around the corner from the Municipal Archives, where she had hoped to start her research immediately. Here she came across an archivist, who was, at first, rather unhelpful and disdainful of ‘this British woman’. He told her that if she hoped to do any research on early documents, she would have to study palaeography with him at the University of Deusto, where he taught History. Most native Spanish speakers could not, and cannot, read the very convoluted Spanish handwriting of the 16th century with all its abbreviations as well as difficult loops, let alone a female foreigner. While she took the course in 1972, she started working once again as an English teacher, to be able to scrape by, and at the same time she started her own research at the Archives.
Selma was told that most archives along the Spanish Basque coast had been burnt during the Napoleonic wars, but perhaps she should try the archives of the Consulado del Mar in Burgos? There, a kind, very helpful archivist, Floriano Ballesteros, introduced her to the 16th century insurance policies stored there. He also recommended she try looking at the copies of notarial documents from the coast that were held in the Oñati archives.
For 400 years, legajos (books of notarial documents) from towns across the province of Gipuzkoa, had lain in the attics of the 1543 University of Oñati. Don José María Aguirrebalzátegui, one of the village priests, had rescued many over the years, filling three huge university rooms with legajos.
When Selma arrived, Don José María showed her the three rooms of books of notarial documents. There was no index, but he gave her the key to the archives. In 1973, she moved, along with her four children, to Oñati, because she could see that there were years of work for her there. For hours on end, often till the early hours of the morning, Selma sat turning over each page in these thousands of ancient books. During their school holidays, she also sat her four children down around her. She taught them to recognise some of the formulae used in these 16th century documents, as well as the key word ‘Terra nova’. Most of the documents were to do with local problems, neighbours arguing over property boundaries, for example. But a few, mixed in amongst so many others, were to do with The New Found Land/‘Terra nova’.
Because of these ‘Terra nova’ documents, and a desperate need to have something to live on, she persuaded the Public Archives of Canada to give her contracts to collect and microfilm documents referring to Canada, found in archives throughout the Iberian Peninsula. Being extremely honest, she and her children only lived on a six-month contract every year, because she felt this gave her the freedom to devote the other six months to her own research.
Though based in Oñati, Selma spent months in Burgos, where Floriano let her and her four children, duly kitted out with white gloves, sift through the Consulado’s insurance policies, again looking for the word ‘Terra Nova’. She also often visited the archives in the Real Chancilleria de Valladolid, the Archives in Simancas, the General Archive of the Indies in Seville, the archives in Oviedo, Setubal, Lisbon, Aveiro & Oporto in Portugal, and parish archives in many other Basque towns.
The information she gathered from these different archives provided Selma with specific information on individuals, their families, their homes, their movements, their ships, their voyages, their towns all along the Spanish Basque coast in the 16th and early 17th centuries. In parish records, Selma found records of births, deaths, marriages and baptisms. Through insurance policies in Burgos, she found insurances of ships and their voyages. Through notarial archives, she found contracts, wills (some of which were written in ‘Terra nova’), powers of attorney, loans, donations, policies, proceedings, agreements. Through lengthy lawsuits in other archives, she learnt among other things of disagreements between crew members, claims made by widows of fishermen who had died in ‘Terra nova’, ships that had sunk on the other side of the Atlantic.
Over the years, Selma meticulously made notes and collated the information she so painstakingly compiled, including information about the ships themselves, where they were from, when they were built, who owned them, who kitted them out, who insured them. About the ships’ voyages: many were used not only for the ‘Terra nova’ run, but also for the ‘Carrera de las Indias’ i.e. Mexico & the Caribbean. And some of the ships ended their days in Newfoundland, in the Indies, off Iceland or our UK shores having been embargoed by the King of Spain – Felipe II – for the Armada. Selma also pieced together the names of many of the sailors, whalers, shipowners, their wives, their relationships, where they lived and where they died.
Fascinated, Selma visited Basque towns, caseríos (Basque farmhouses), churches, ports, shipyards, which she found mentioned in her documents. She met local clergy, townsfolk and dignitaries, learning more about these towns, some of which still had fishermen going to the Grand Banks off Newfoundland. She became involved in conservation, saving or trying to save, town centres and ancient caseríos from destruction. She was asked to give talks to locals interested in their history, to schools, and universities. She met archivists, linguists, anthropologists, historians, archaeologists, shipbuilders, cartographers, topographers, fishermen, whalers, academics, and other experts.
Selma had noticed that every now and then the scribes writing in the 1500s would insert a word in Basque in the Spanish text. She concluded that some of the scribes would be simultaneously translating what fishermen were telling them in Basque.
The 1970s was not an easy time to live in the Basque country. The Basques, their language, their culture, were being viciously repressed by General Franco’s regime. Children at school were physically punished if they spoke Basque. Selma and her family knew many people, from boys of 17 to mothers of 50, who, simply for speaking their language or putting up a Basque flag, were taken before dawn from their homes and families by violent civil guards with Alsatians, imprisoned, tortured, disappeared. The Barkhams sometimes stood in silence alongside their Basque friends in Oñati, who held pictures of the disappeared. They too celebrated with a bottle of Codorniú the end of the dictatorship in 1975.
Selma began to write articles on her discoveries. Given the breadth of her research, she wrote on various topics, women’s lives in the 16th century, merchants, trade routes, corsair activity, early Labrador ports, toponymy, etc. In this magazine, in 1973, she wrote ‘Mercantile community in inland Burgos.’ v. 42, no. 2, November, p. 106-113. In 1977, ‘First will and testament on the Labrador coast.’ v. 49, no. 9, June, p. 574-581.
Amongst the thousands of documents in different archives which Selma analysed, besides finding the word ‘Terra nova’, she also sometimes found names of specific ports, such as Samadet, Los Hornos, Chateo, Buttus.
If you look nowadays at a map of the Canadian Atlantic Coast, you will not find these place names anywhere. ‘Terra nova’ simply means the New Found Land, and could refer to anywhere at that time along that North Atlantic seaboard.
So, Selma went to libraries and archives in Spain, France, Portugal, the Vatican and England, to look for early 16th century maps & rutters (mariners’ handbooks of written sailing directions). Through this cartographic research, she managed to piece together such an accurate picture of where these Basque fishing and whaling ports in the New Found Land were, that she was able to pin point them on present day maps of Nova Scotia, Québec, Newfoundland and Labrador. She gave talks on her findings from this research on Basque topographical names in ‘Terra Nova’ at various international conferences.
Selma poured over UK admiralty charts, looking at the depths of ports, searching for prevailing winds. She located on maps the places she thought ships had foundered, two of which were in
Red Bay. She then gave a talk in January 1977 to the underwater archaeological society in Ottawa, where she had maps with Xs marking where exactly she thought the shipwrecks she had found in documents had sunk. It was there that Parks Canada archaeologists got all excited and asked her not to let anyone else know lest the wrecks be located by ‘treasure divers’. Though the Public Archives of Canada, for whom Selma worked, had already passed on information about her finds in Spain and on the Atlantic seaboard of Canada to Parks Canada.
The year after Selma’s 1977 excursion to Labrador, Parks Canada sent a team of underwater archaeologists up to Labrador to look at the places Selma had told them several ships had sunk, in Chateau Bay, in Red Bay, among others. Her research was so exact that a diver found one of her wrecks the first day of diving in Red Bay. This one was not as deep as the Chateau Bay ones, and the town itself was accessible by road, which is probably why they focussed on Red Bay.
The discovery of the ship San Juan was announced to the press at the Public Archives of Canada in Ottawa for whom Selma worked, and not at Parks Canada for whom the divers worked, because it was Selma’s pioneering historical-geographical research which had found the wreck.
Selma’s extensive research also shed light on trade routes, fishermen turned corsairs in times of war, contact between the Malouins, Bristolmen, Irish, Icelanders, and with First Nations in Canada. She discovered what the Basque fishermen and whalers took aboard ship; that several generations of fishermen and often people from the same villages all went over together on the same ships; learnt about accidental overwinterings, the seasons they went over, the renting of their shallops which they often left in Labrador for the following year, hidden so they would be less likely to be borrowed by members of the First Nations. She was entranced and thrilled when she found sketches of ships in the documents, or a will that had been folded over so that when it arrived back at the notary’s office in Euskadi/The Basque Country, after several months at sea, the part on the outside was dark where it had rubbed against something on the long trip home. 500 years later, this will written in the New Found Land was found sewn into the legajo, with clear signs of being folded, the dark outer square obvious.
Selma’s research was groundbreaking in many ways. For it, she received the gold medal from the Royal Canadian Geographical Society (1980), the first woman to receive this medal. Then followed the Order of Canada (1981), the Lagun Onari (2014) from the Basque Government, the Order of Newfoundland and Labrador (2015), various honorary doctorates, and the International Prize of the Sociedad Geográfica Española (2018), amongst other honours, for her exceptional work, ‘a classic piece of historical-geographical research’.
Though the 16th & 17th centuries became alive for Selma because of her research, the present was also equally interesting to her. She started exchanges of Basques with Newfoundlanders, of Basques and Mi’kmaqs, groups of them visiting each other’s countries. She worked up and down the coast of Labrador and Newfoundland with locals talking about their villages’ links with the Basques, about 16th century wills written on their shores, about contact between Basques and Inuit and Montagnais, and other First Nations, about shipwrecks. She helped them put up historical plaques in their villages. She organised conferences for 11 years on the Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland, bringing in experts in different fields to talk about local history, ecology, geology and cartography. She got in touch with the James Cook society, as James Cook had charted the Straits of Belle Isle, and brought speakers over. She keenly felt her historical research could help the local economy. And it has. Historical tourism now brings many visitors to Newfoundland and Labrador because of her work. One of the sites Selma found all those years ago, which she first explored on that expedition in 1977, is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Selma Huxley Barkham’s work has been picked up and used by archivists, historians, cartographers, topographers, anthropologists, archaeologists, conservators, museographers, linguists, and more. Albaola is re-building a ship which she found by piecing together information from documents from three different archives, and by working in different countries on early maps to find where the port of Buttus was, and then by looking at depths and prevailing winds to find where it had sunk. Selma’s work, her 50 publications in Spanish, English, French and Portuguese, her many lectures, and her generous sharing of her research, has led to a wide variety of further work in her field. Unfortunately, she has not always been duly credited.
Selma’s work is seminal. As the citation for the gold medal of the Canadian Geographical Society states: ‘This medal is an occasional award intended to recognise a particular achievement in the field of geography, also to recognise a significant national or international event. In this case, the Society felt Barkham deserved this recognition on both counts.
Had a beautiful though cold day at Frampton Marsh, Lincolnshire, yesterday with our local RSPB group. The light over the scrapes was fantastic and it was a great pleasure to have such brilliant views of the birds including these handsome lapwings. D500_05003.NEF. Many thanks for views, comments and favourites.
After brunch, we walked down the MLK Jr. Promenade and up Kettner to the SSMCA which is located next to the Santa Fe Depot. The walk over was really fun, we took our time so I could take lots of photos and the beautiful blue skies and white puffy clouds along with the skyscrapers made for some wonderful opportunities.
So many shapes and scrapes and facets in these little bergs. Quidi Vidi 'gut'. St. John's, NL, Canada.
The common tern (Sterna hirundo) is a seabird in the family Laridae. This bird has a circumpolar distribution, its four subspecies breeding in temperate and subarctic regions of Europe, Asia and North America. It is strongly migratory, wintering in coastal tropical and subtropical regions. Breeding adults have light grey upper parts, white to very light grey underparts, a black cap, orange-red legs, and a narrow pointed bill. Depending on the subspecies, the bill may be mostly red with a black tip or all black. There are a number of similar species, including the partly sympatric Arctic tern, which can be separated on plumage details, leg and bill colour, or vocalizations.
Breeding in a wider range of habitats than any of its relatives, the common tern nests on any flat, poorly vegetated surface close to water, including beaches and islands, and it readily adapts to artificial substrates such as floating rafts. The nest may be a bare scrape in sand or gravel, but it is often lined or edged with whatever debris is available. Up to three eggs may be laid, their dull colors and blotchy patterns providing camouflage on the open beach. Incubation is by both sexes, and the eggs hatch in around 21–22 days, longer if the colony is disturbed by predators. The downy chicks fledge in 22–28 days. Like most terns, this species feeds by plunge-diving for fish, either in the sea or in freshwater, but molluscs, crustaceans and other invertebrate prey may form a significant part of the diet in some areas.
Eggs and young are vulnerable to predation by mammals such as rats and American mink, and large birds including gulls, owls and herons. Common terns may be infected by lice, parasitic worms, and mites, although blood parasites appear to be rare. Its large population and huge breeding range mean that this species is classed as being of least concern, although numbers in North America have declined sharply in recent decades. Despite international legislation protecting the common tern, in some areas populations are threatened by habitat loss, pollution or the disturbance of breeding colonies.
For more information, please visit en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_tern
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What you cannot see in this window shot is a giant pot of water. With each pass of the scraper, a whole new batch of fresh noodles drop in the boiling pot.
Seen in Explore!
Highest position: 136 on December 19, 2012
Tried to correct the lens deformation my own please give comments how to improve / check correct perspective.
Another buck has been rubbing scent from his head on these leaves. Will likely be a scrape here soon. This buck is a 10-pt, but does not have a big body. There are some other bucks around much bigger. He interacted with one today that cut him a lot of slack in some sparring. As the rut approaches, he won't always be treated so kind. Our beautiful world, pass it on.
Hide Camp
Fort William First Nation
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This little buck came along and checked a scrape made by a couple of bigger bucks. Fortunately for him, they weren't around. Our beautiful world, pass it on.
July 10, 2023 - North Central & South Central Nebraska US
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Solo Chase Day & Close to Home....
Luv it when the chases are in my backyard. Not having to drive 3 states and 1200 miles in 1 day is relief. I know I'm not the only chaser that says that. This was a phenomenal afternoon of severe weather. When I say this... It means that its photogenic & for the most part not effecting the farms, agriculture, livestock & the human element.
Mammatus before the storm, then I decided to bail on this first storm for the next which was to the north about 25 miles. This storm had wicked good rotation under the base. Even though it was high based it was producing some freakin awesome views.
The storm had overtaken my position and I had a 40 min drive to get back in front of this storm. It was on my tail the whole way back to the I-80 corridor. Though a little late I was still able to get back in front of shelf cloud. The teeth on the outflow were almost scraping the ground. It gave the effect of a funnel but it was not. Been doing this to long to make sure I know the difference.
That was a hoot. Though I waited til the last minute. I got swallowed by the core & had to wait it out. Want to see what its like out in the open with no shelter... This I have also done a billion times. 50mph winds rocked my truck! That was fun!
Finally, I blazed it backed to Kearney for this Storms Finale... Beautiful Sunset light illuminates the exiting storm with a Anvil Rain & Mammatus Cluster ... It was truly a Sight to See!!!!
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of The Suicide Squad Barrel.
Seriously, these guys are made of obscure, and they pretty much all die eventually. But I guess that's the point of squad; to get rid of the C and D listers.
Anyways
Javelin: Mr. Incredible head, CMF 15(?) wrestler torso (reversed), arms and legs.
Mindboggler: generic female head, Monster Fighters' torso (reversed), CMF Cowgirl legs.
The Atom (Adam Cray): Storm Trooper head, 2011 Dino torso, CMF Dino Hunter legs.
Chronos: Eclipsegrafx head, Hyperion cape, Dr. Doom torso, CMF Astronaut legs.
Blockbuster: CMF Zombie Businessman hair, Anakin head, Mad Eye Moody torso, SW Freemaker legs.
Briscoe: Painted on sunglasses to a generic head, black shirt, CMF Biker legs.
Manhunter: Dr. Doom head, Boromir torso, Iron Man hips, CMF Space marine legs.
Lemme know whatcha think, comment if you fave and all that.
Mi ero completamente dimenticato di finire questa serie, sono un idiota.
Beh, eccola per intero. Potete vedere tutte e 14 le foto sul mio sito ufficiale o su Facebook.
P.s. breve riassunto: fabbrica abbandonata, poco tempo a disposizione, arrivano gli zingari e ci minacciano. Tutto sommato è andata fin troppo bene. xD
****
I totally forgot about this series, me = idiot. Well, now it's finished: you can see all 14 pictures on my official site or on my Facebook.
P.s. quick recap: abandoned factory, no time enough, then gypsies (!) arrive threatening us. All in all, the result is even too well xD