Golden plover: the wings that shake the barley

THE road I drive to get to my local village includes a section with huge fields of winter barley on both sides.

At this time of year, if the weather is reasonably mild, there are often great flocks of golden plover wheeling and diving over the fields.

It’s a spectacular sight but also a little baffling. To begin with I can’t work out what the birds are doing. Sometimes they land on the field but the bird experts say that the golden plover is a ‘night time forager’, so presumably they’re not feeding. And they seem to spend more of the time doing lots of complicated flying that appears to be a complete waste of energy.