Some birds seem inherently comical. I can’t help being amused by the duck taking its name from its habit of ducking. In English it has enjoyed this name for some time — a thousand years or so. Before that it was called ened, a word related to the Latin anas, anatem.
Similarly, the swift is so called because it is swift. That name seems to go back fewer than 400 years, and I’m not sure what it was called before that. Swallow, perhaps, since it has something in common with it.
But there are some false friends among the feathered tribes. The lapwing was itself friendless last week, when Natural England stopped farmers shooting its predators. Its alternative name, peewit, comes from its cry, and it is also known as the peeweep, peesweep or tewhit.
Its older name, lapwing, has nothing to do with a lap or a wing.
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