The Lapwing: A Watchman of the Fields and a Herald of the Monsoon

 **2003**

We call it *Tatehri* in local parlance or dialect.

This bird, found in the fields, is characterised by long, thin yellow legs and dark brown feathering.

Enter its territory and it starts giving alarming, full-throated watchman's cries. Farmers, during those long, solitary nights while irrigating their fields, find a very cautious companion in this bird.

If anyone happens to arrive from any direction, his arrival is sure to be noticed by this bird. It then inevitably gives an alarm-raising, shrieking twitter.

And then the farmers use it, even during these scientifically charged days of weather forecasting by the Meteorological Department with the help of multipurpose weather satellites, to estimate the amount of rain during the upcoming monsoon.

In the post-harvest, barren, cracked fields during May and June, if a farmer finds its eggs laid on some higher elevation, like a big clod or field subdivider, then he promptly surmises that rain will be abundant in the upcoming rainy season.

On the other hand, if the nest is found in some dusty hollow, then that connotes that rains will be scarce.