The mean city dweller can do quite a few things wrong in the country: ignore pasture fences to pet a calf. Dodge the bulldog so awkwardly on the dirt road that the driver has no chance of passing or even has to back up. Assume that agricultural land and crops, because outside, are a self-service store. It is not so. This also applies to flower strips, by the way.
But even for Ebersbergers by choice who have been socialized close to the countryside, a simple walk around Grafing has its pitfalls. That is when they leave the paved road, which meanders picturesquely between fields and meadows, in the mistaken assumption that the pretty dirt road will take them back to the parked car. Unfortunately, the path ends in nowhere. So what to do? Do you want to go all the way back on your own tracks or take the cross-country shortcut? Of course, you would never trudge through the middle of a freshly sown field, that’s as clear as day, but right on the edge of a not too high meadow? You do it, make good progress, will be back in the office on time after the lunch break. The last hurdle is a stream – no, you definitely don’t dare to jump over it. So quickly along the shore, back to the tarred road.
A short time later, a silently approaching e-car stops right next to the walkers. Probably a local unfamiliar looking for the right way. Not even close. The distinguished, elderly gentleman with the carefully trimmed beard, who speaks through the rolled-down window before he gets out, introduces himself as a conservationist. First he asks if one has seen the lapwings. You didn’t (psst, you wouldn’t have recognized them anyway). These would be about to breed very close to the water, which is why you shouldn’t go there.
He recites all this calmly in a quiet, sonorous voice, without the slightest hint of a raised index finger. In this way, the man ensures that one is ashamed and feels guilty, the pressure to justify and the automatic defensiveness that arise reflexively in the case of a know-it-all rebuke, but are completely absent.
Instead, one listens in fascination to the explanations about the “acrobats of the air”, recognizable by their white belly, and hopes to be able to see the spectacular capers that the lapwing expert raves about. That’s not possible on this day, but at least you can catch a glimpse of two feathered creatures on the field right next to the bypass just before the underpass. Without binoculars one can only speculate whether they are the right ones – the car noise certainly doesn’t seem to bother them.
It is to be wished that once the lapwings have started nesting, no careless walker will do so, even without a vigilant conservationist nearby. Especially since these birds, we now know, are on the Bavarian Red List as “endangered”.