Lapwings

Birds have three common means of display: colouration, voice and flight. The lapwing is one of the few species blessed in all three attributes: strikingly handsome and boldly marked, it has a thrilling call, and a wildly mesmerising aerobatic display flight.

‘Looks black and white at a distance… in flight, boldly pied… flight often tumbling and erratic.’
– The Shell Guide to the Birds of Britain and Ireland

‘It sports and frolics in the air in all directions…’
– Thomas Bewick

When their raw cries swept over, my head spun
With all the brilliance of their black and white
As though you cracked the dark and found the sun.
– ‘Lapwings’, Alison Brackenbury

The largest flock I’ve witnessed, of several thousand birds, was often to be seen close to the payage on the A6 autoroute, south-east of Paris at Fleury-en-Biere. So many birds in the air together, rapidly changing direction, black plumage randomly switching to white and back again, creates an effect more than dazzling, almost illusory, deceiving our vision so that we can no longer tell what we are looking at, only its effect.

Lapwings is in the tradition of attempts to represent phenomena typographically.