Parmesan cheese good for rare birds in Italy

This is a video about northern lapwings and their eggs in the Netherlands.

From Italian news agency ANSA:

Parmesan good for endangered birds

Threatened species prefer cow pastures to crop fields

REGGIO EMILIA By remaining faithful to centuries-old traditions of production, Parmesan cheese is giving endangered birds a new lease on life, according to a study by an Italian environmental group.

LIPU, the Italian Bird Protection League, surveyed the northern Italian regions where Parmesan is the main type of cheese produced, and found that there are more rare species like lapwings and duck-hawks near cow pastures than in neighbouring corn or tomato fields.

Many of the pastures have remained untouched for over 100 years, in line with Parmesan producers’ policy of keeping their cows out in the open air.

Intensive crop farming, on the other hand, deprives birds of cover for nesting, and poison the ground containing the insects they need to survive.

I had to look up duck-hawk.

I know what a chicken-hawk is, someone who loves US soldiers and local civilians dying in Iraq and elsewhere, but who would not dream of going there to fight himself: too ‘chicken’ to put his ‘hawkish’ ideas into practice in his own life.

Duck-hawks are not as well known.

It turned out they are far less obnoxious than chickenhawks: they are just a synonym for peregrine falcons.