Country diary: lapwings do their courting to the tune of creaky doors

Salter's Gate, Weardale: Having performed her provocative display, the female seems to ignore the suitor with his bandit eye-stripe

The sky above this open hillside, overlooking Tunstall reservoir in the valley below, was filled with skylark song, but lapwings, Vanellus vanellus, commanded attention with reckless display flights and calls reminiscent of rusty hinges. Thirty years ago, when we came here to watch them with our children, they christened them "creaky doors".

Related: The lapwing's unearthly sounds fill the fields