WE could be forgiven for thinking that the dark art of lying is a peculiarly human trait. Surely deliberate deceit does not exist in nature. Wrong – not only does it exist, but it is surprisingly common.

Camouflage is the simplest form of deception; an animal or plant is essentially saying, “I’m not here – I’m a leaf or a rock or just another patch of tree trunk”.

Just think how difficult it is to spot a grouse sitting in the heather, a plaice lying on a sandy seabed or a mountain hare in the snow.

Some creatures’ strategies are a little more complex – they pretend to be other, scarier creatures in an effort to be left safely alone.

Hover-flies are harmless, but mimic the black and yellow jerseys of wasps and certain butterflies and moths have “eye-spots” on their wings which look like the face of a larger animal – well, long enough for them to make their escape.

Earlier in the summer, while walking near West Ayton, I was personally lied to on the bank of the River Derwent by a small, brown, wading bird called a common sandpiper.

The bird suddenly appeared on the path in front of me, bobbing up and down in an anxious sort of manner and uttering a single-note call repeatedly.

As I approached, he or she (sandpiper sexes are identical) ran along the path ahead, matching my speed and seeming to invite me to follow.

It was when I stopped to look at him/her through my binoculars that something bizarre happened. The bird turned around, ran back to within five yards of me and then mysteriously developed an injury. Its left wing drooped lifelessly to the ground as the sandpiper half ran/half fluttered away again, up the path with me in pursuit.

Once we had moved 30 yards or so along the river bank, the distressed bird suddenly leapt into the air and flew away using its miraculously healed broken wing.

The sandpiper was never injured, of course; it was telling a quite sophisticated lie designed to tempt would-be predators away from its vulnerable chicks, which were probably hidden in the vegetation near where I had stopped to use my binoculars.

Feigning injury is a strategy well-known in the wading bird family, plovers in particular, but I have never seen it perpetrated by a sandpiper before.

We have breeding sandpipers on most of our shallow, gravelly rivers in Ryedale, but if you go to check on the progress of your local family after reading this, don’t expect to see anything because they’ve probably gone.

It takes the chicks about a month to grow to full size and learn how to fly and as soon as they do, the whole family heads south to spend the winter in Africa.

Usually they have all left this country by mid-August, making them our earliest summer visitor departures.

My West Ayton doting parent sandpiper might be in southern Spain by now or even over the Straits of Gibraltar.

There is no scientific evidence that families travel together on their migratory flights, but I do like the thought that he/she has kept a weather eye on the youngsters all the way to Africa – especially after lying to me on their behalf.