Their characteristic loud alarm calls are indicators of human or animal movements and the sounds have been variously rendered as did he do it or pity to do it[2] leading to the colloquial name of did-he-do-it bird.
The cryptically patterned chicks hatch and immediately follow their parents to feed, hiding by lying low on the ground or in the grass when threatened.
[4] Traditionally well known to native hunters, the red-wattled lapwing was first described in a book by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in his Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux in 1781.
[5] The bird was also illustrated in a hand-coloured plate engraved by François-Nicolas Martinet in the Planches Enluminées D'Histoire Naturelle produced under the supervision of Edme-Louis Daubenton to accompany Buffon's text.
[8] It was subsequently placed in various other genera such as Sarcogrammus and Lobivanellus before being merged into Vanellus which was erected by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson in 1760.
[11] Across their wide range there are slight differences in the plumage and there are four recognized subspecies:[12] Red-wattled lapwings are large waders, about 35 cm (14 in) long.
[4] It usually keeps in pairs or trios in well-watered open country, ploughed fields, grazing land, and margins and dry beds of tanks and puddles.
It runs about in short spurts and dips forward obliquely (with unflexed legs) to pick up food in a typical plover manner.
[4] Is uncannily and ceaselessly vigilant, day or night, and is the first to detect intrusions and raise an alarm, and was therefore considered a nuisance by hunters.
[17] The local names are mainly onomatopoeic in origin and include titahri (Hindi), titawi (Marathi), tittibha (Kannada), tateehar (Sindhi), titodi (Gujarati), hatatut (Kashmiri), balighora (Assamese), yennappa chitawa (Telugu),[2] aal-kaati (Tamil, meaning "human indicator").
May migrate altitudinally in spring and autumn (e.g. in N. Baluchistan or NW Pakistan), and spreads out widely in the monsoons[13] on creation of requisite habitats, but by and large the populations are resident.
[25][26][27][28] Both the male and female incubate the eggs and divert predators using distraction displays or flash their wings to deter any herbivores that threaten the nest.
[13] Hugh B. Cott claimed that the flesh of the bird was unpalatable based on evidence from an Indian geologist who noted that a hungry tiger cub refused to eat their meat.
[39] In parts of India, a local belief is that the bird sleeps on its back with the legs upwards and an associated Hindi metaphor Titahri se asman thama jayega ("can the lapwing support the heavens?")
[41][42][43] The Bhils of Malwa believed that the laying of eggs by red-wattled lapwings in the dry beds of streams as forewarnings of delayed rains or droughts.