WHEN IS A PEWIT NOT A PEWIT? (1 Viewer)

[Farnboro John]

Fantastic Bjorn, thank you.
I will be dipping into these sources in more depth for those clues. It seems the gulls "came to the Pewit Pool" and if so, the pool may have been already named (after the Lapwings), so yes, it would be as you suggest a "secondary toponym" (!), a bird assuming the name of another's landscape or habitat (when it moves in). But to me that still feels a bit tenuous. The lapwings wouldn't be directly linked with the pond, but with the fenny or marshy terrain around it. But I will delve deeper.
I found a "Puits Pond" in France which I'm going to look further into, I suspect it means a Pit Pond of some kind (puits = a pit, a well) (we have many old mining areas in the west of Scotland which have become flooded, and there were many gravel pits too which turned into "ponds" in recent decades, so that's a link too).

This I think is an unsupported assertion. My experience of Lapwings is that flocks frequently roost communally on islands in pools and feed around their margins. The Lapwings in the quoted case could well be linked directly with the pool.

John

 

[paranoid numanoid]

This I think is an unsupported assertion. My experience of Lapwings is that flocks frequently roost communally on islands in pools and feed around their margins. The Lapwings in the quoted case could well be linked directly with the pool.

John

I take your point John, thank you. It was more of a thought.

 

[dantheman]

This I think is an unsupported assertion. My experience of Lapwings is that flocks frequently roost communally on islands in pools and feed around their margins. The Lapwings in the quoted case could well be linked directly with the pool.

John

Are we talking about different seasons however - winter Lapwing different to breeding season Black-headed Gulls in a colony?

 

[Farnboro John]

Are we talking about different seasons however - winter Lapwing different to breeding season Black-headed Gulls in a colony?

Quite possibly, but hard to tell which the pool name derives from?

Speaking of which it's just occurred to me the Lapwing has its black cap year round, unlike the Black-headed Gull!

John

 

[paranoid numanoid]

Quite possibly, but hard to tell which the pool name derives from?

Speaking of which it's just occurred to me the Lapwing has its black cap year round, unlike the Black-headed Gull!

John

Good points, but the area's association with the pewits would surely stick with the locals even if they moved off and were replaced by breeding BHG's.
Re: black cap all the year round, yes true, and the gull's hood isn't even black!!
Oddly, according to my Montague (1831), the BHG (listed as Laughing gull) was at one time named the brown-headed gull and the red-legged gull (Latham) but those names didn't stick!

 

[Björn Bergenholtz]

... so yes, it would be as you suggest a "secondary toponym" (!), a bird assuming the name of another's landscape or habitat (when it moves in). But to me that still feels a bit tenuous. The lapwings wouldn't be directly linked with the pond, but with the fenny or marshy terrain around it. But I will delve deeper.
...

Re. "... a bit tenuous". Of course my intentions was that the original Pewits (Lapwings), that might have given the "poole" its name, (mostly) ought to have been found in the surroundings/vicinity of the poole (but also at its edges, shoreline/waterline).

I know my (Northern/Common) Lapwings (and this kind of Gull) fairly well.

/B

PS. For everyone less familiar with the contemporary 'Peewits' of today (a k a pewits, tuits alt. tew-its, in plural), see here, (and note the habitat; freshwater), also see figure 2, here, (even if, in this particular case/Photo, in Bangladesh).

 

[paranoid numanoid]

Re. "... a bit tenuous". Of course my intentions was that the original Pewits (Lapwings), that might have given the "poole" its name, (mostly) ought to have been found in the surroundings/vicinity of the poole (but also at its edges, shoreline/waterline).

I know my (Northern/Common) Lapwings (and this kind of Gull) fairly well.

/B

PS. For everyone less familiar with the contemporary 'Peewits' of today (a k a pewits, tuits alt. tew-its, in plural), see here, (and note the habitat; freshwater), also see figure 2, here, (even if, in this particular case/Photo, in Bangladesh).

Sadly in Scotland we used to have great flocks of lapwing in almost every flooded field, mixed with golden plover, even on the outskirts of big towns (I'm thinking of what is now a car park in front of Crosshouse hospital in Kilmarnock, where there used to many hundreds on a regular basis), but now there are few places where I see lapwings in any numbers.
Here the black-headed gull is very common, and (I think) for that reason under-appreciated. It is striking in the older writers how they remark on the grace and beauty of gulls, whereas today most people think of them all as flying rats and sandwich-snatchers!
I do think the harsh call of the BHG really contrasts with its slim gracefulness, I had an injured one which I kept for a few days, it was stunned and wouldn't even swim in the bath, or take any food, and it died in my hands at night wrapped up in a warm towel looking at the full moon. I have a soft spot for these birds and I think their juveniles are among the most beautifully marked of all our native species. Shame they scream like stuck crows!
One old name for this species was "hooded crow", after its hood and its cry, and another was "white crow". Of course even the crows are named after their call!! ... at least in England and Scotland.

 

[paranoid numanoid]

Also see New Curiosities of Literature: And Book of the Months, Vol. II, by George Sloane (1849), both quoting and commenting on (in this particular case) older Literature, here.

Couldn't it simply be; Pewit (Lapwing) Gull, as in the Gull/s breeding (in large numbers) at the Pewit (Lapwing) poole (pool/Pond?). A sort of a secondary Toponym – originating in their shared breeding ground, the (old) "Pewit poole" ... or?



To me, it looks like it could be worth having a look at: "Dr. Plot's Natural History of Staffordshire, p.231. folio. Oxford, 1686." (as told in Sloane's reference/footnote, on p.280), which takes us; here. The "Pewit poole" was also mentioned on pp.214, 216-217 (see here).

Also see W. H. Mullens commenting on Mr. Plot's accomplishments, in the Paper Some Early British Ornithologists and Their Works (1909); here (see pp.220-222):

Enjoy!

Björn

---

*Ought to be Norbury St Peter's Church here (alt. here, or here).

Maybe the old "Pewit poole" could be found in today's Aqualate Mere National Nature Reserve ... ?

Also note (even if somewhat irrelevant in this certain case) that there are quite a few places by the name Pewit in the UK (Google maps here): Pewit Island/Lane/-hall.

/B

In Plot's illustrated account (apparently quoted by Yarrell in his BB edition iii, who also included the illustration!) the young black-headed gulls, on the 3 June annnually, "run like Lapwings into the net".
That's the first direct written link beween Pewits and Pewits!! Is this how they got the name? I wonder.
Let's pause for a brief celebration anyway.
Ok, back to work!