TIIE DOTTEREL 217 



to the salmon-fisher, it may, perhaps, be as well not to 

 disclose the exact breeding stations of the species in Scot- 

 land, but I should like to give a description of one of the 

 most interesting days I have spent at the haunts of these 

 birds. 



The season was late enough to find eggs — ^it was close 

 on Midsummer's Day, to be precise — when I started out 

 with an old stalker for the high ground. The spring 

 had been arctic, even out of the ordinary, and large fields 

 of the winter's snow still remained on all the higher hills. 

 As we made our way up to the tops, a strong westerly 

 wind brought with it stinging showers of hail, but as we 

 pressed on upwards the wind dropped, and for a short 

 time the sun made his appearance. On our way we 

 crossed the spot where a stalker some years ago had 

 passed his time in digging for Cairngorm stones. I believe 

 that these excavations were successful, and as we passed 

 we found and collected quite a number of crystals of 

 smoked quartz of various sizes and shades of colouring. 



Shortly after noon we reached the nesting site of the 

 Dotterel, a plateaux extending for several miles at an 

 elevation of close on 4000 feet above sea-level and devoid 

 of shelter of any kind. Here we had ample evidence 

 of the severity of the past winter and of the absence of any 

 warm weather since, for great fields of snow fringed the 

 precipice which dipped down to the lochan far beneath, 

 and as we commenced our search for the Dotterel the 

 mists descended on the table-land, and snow began to fall 

 in large feathery flakes which soon covered the hill with 

 a uniform white sheet. We imagined that this snowy 

 covering would render easy of discovery any nests of the 

 small Plover which might happen to be in the vicinity, 

 but a careful search was quite unproductive, and we 

 actually saw a flock of a score or so of Dotterel on the most 

 elevated part of the plateau, evidently the whole, or almost 



