424 ENGLISH BIRD LIFE 



Spotted Redshank, are of much rarer occurrence, 

 the latter especially so. 



One bird there is that still visits the coast in 

 passing, but in steadily decreasing numbers — the 

 Dotterel. At one time this bird, with its grey and 

 white head, and breast of chestnut and black, might 

 have been frequently found nesting on heathery 

 English mountains, especially in Westmorland 

 and Cumberland. But its disposition was singu- 

 larly confiding. When approached it merely moved 

 a few paces away and regarded the encroacher with 

 listless eyes. Thus, its feathers being in great 

 request for the manufacture of trout-flies, it grows 

 rarer year bv vear, and already in some of its once 

 most favoured haunts the " stupid " Dotterel exists 

 no more. 



The Stone Curlew, too, is a summer migrant 

 whose visits appear to grow' rarer and rarer. It is 

 a large handsome bird of brown and black-streaked 

 plumage, and in formation has much of the char- 

 acter of the Bustards. At one time it was well 

 known on the Yorkshire wolds, also the haunts in 

 times gone by of the Great Bustard ^ — birds 

 which, we are told, resembled herds of fallow deer 

 in the distance, but which are now extinct in this 

 country. The Stone Curlew is still to be found 

 nesting in many waste places in England, especially 

 in Norfolk ; and as the lands become enclosed, it 

 not unfrequently takes up its residence in young 

 plantations. The eggs, two in number, of a pale 



^ The admirable efforts of Lord Walsingham to re-introduce 

 the Great Bustard to Norfolk in recent years, appear to have 

 been frustrated by the murderous instincts of ignorant gunners. 



