This is Bird Note.

I'm Joanne Ryan, a nature educator in Trinidad and Tobago.

Day and night, I often hear the piercing cackles of southern lapwings right from my home.

They are familiar sights in my neighborhood.

In a shallow depression on a grassy cricket field

are three olive-brown muttle eggs.

A southern lapwing mother carefully covers the clutch

before leaving to look for food.

But this clutch of eggs needs more than just camouflage to evade predators,

like reptiles on the ground or hawks in the sky.

If an unfamiliar creature approaches,

the southern Lapwing parent, usually the male, sounds his alarm.

He then charges towards his opponent, wings open, and head low, ready to peck with his sharp beak.

If that doesn't work, the lapwing takes flight, where he becomes a feathered fighter jet

swooping at the intruder.

And the lapwing has a secret weapon, sharp red, bony spurs that stick out from the bird's wrists.

My heart jumped the first time I had to duck to avoid a lapwing's flying attack.

I thought I was a good distance away,

but the bird thought otherwise.

This is why humans can never get too close to a southern Lapwing's nest.

These ferocious defenders simply won't have it.