Lapwing

Lapwing is a bird of the Charadriiformes order, which includes other species of waders. Lapwing is a noticeable bird, many have met it in nature and know it well. This sandpiper can be seen in damp meadows, wet pastures, arable lands, irrigated lands, grassy swamps, along the banks of water bodies. In Russia, the lapwing is also popularly called a piglet, a louse (onomatopoeic) or a lugovka, and in Ukraine and Poland it is called a seagull. The Slavs have long loved this bird: it was forbidden to kill it, they did not touch its nests. This is largely explained by a medieval legend, according to which a young wife, whose enemies killed her husband, turned into a crying lapwing (seagull). Here she flies over his grave and cries loudly. This bird is also the image of a poor, unhappy mother: the reapers want to take her children away, and the birds offend her. They say that one of the hetmans - Bohdan Khmelnytsky or Mazepa - made this bird a symbol of Ukraine-mother. Whoever kills her will be in misfortune, they say in Ukraine.