l86 THE SCOTTISH NATURALIST 



a nest within half a mile, so that their breeding there was at 

 last established. In view of my future observations it should 

 be noted that the number of the birds first observed was 

 three, a point to which I attached no significance at the time. 



Our stock of breeding Dotterel is so limited that I would 

 strongly deprecate the killing of any to solve questions 

 which may arise. We may leave this means of acquiring 

 knowledge to investigators in the foreign breeding places 

 where birds are numerous. Although I have not visited all 

 the breeding ground in Scotland I have traversed most of it, 

 and several spots, not closely examined, I have viewed from 

 sufficient proximity to be able to form an estimate of their 

 stock of birds. Even making fairly liberal allowances for 

 such places I think that from eighty to a hundred pairs will 

 encompass the number of Dotterel breeding in Scotland in 

 an average year. Sometimes the numbers must be much 

 lower. 



In 1907 occurred my second meeting with the Dotterel. 

 Those who spent the early summer of that year in or near 

 the Grampian range will remember the appalling weather 

 which prevailed, the incessant rain and mist. There was 

 even a fresh coating of snow covering the higher hills on the 

 morning of 22nd June. But one good day in June made 

 amends for many bad ones the 17th. The atmosphere on 

 that day was clearer than I have ever experienced in this 

 country, and to this I owed my success in finding the birds. 



There were two of us, and we had climbed to over 

 the 4000 feet level, and so to a gravelled plateau with here 

 and there a small area of moss-covered ground and here 

 and there a patch of Silene acaulis in bloom. We were in 

 a slight dip, when a call, resembling the regular creak of 

 an unoiled wheelbarrow, came faintly from our front. Then 

 at a distance of half a mile I distinctly saw a bird silhouetted 

 against the skyline. I have frequently visited the place 

 since, and have each time marvelled at the extraordinary 

 distance at which I was able to detect any object so small 

 as a Dotterel. At none of my subsequent visits would it 

 have been possible. We followed up our good fortune and 

 soon got within a few yards of the bird, which was running 



