Stroppy Brooding Lapwing

"Hence that general is skilful in attack whose opponent does not know what to defend; and he is skilful in defense whose opponent does not know what to attack."


- Sun Tzu

I took a detour on the way back from the ED today. The lorikeets were nowhere to be found so I wandered around the back of the hospital and up to the back carpark, where there are ofttimes little dinosaurs to be found. I came across this masked lapwing which began squawking up a storm as soon as I hove into view. I thought it was just being stroppy, and decided to try to get a photo of it with its beak open mid-squawk, so I moved closer, snapping away expecting it to evacuate.

It wasn't until I got really quite close and moved around it a bit that I saw why it was sticking around: it was guarding its clutch of eggs. So I left it in peace (after taking this photo, of course). ;-)

I cropped the original image, sharpened the lapwing and eggs, raised the contrast and brightness a touch, and raised the luminance curve just on the eggs.

Large version here.