THE DOTTEREL 221 



became momentarily slower, until, judging himself out 

 of danger, he deliberately lay down, curling himself up 

 like a dog, and fell asleep. Periodically he roused him- 

 self and took a survey, without, however, rising to his 

 feet, yet seemed quite comfortable although a strong and 

 bitter cold wind was sweeping up the hill and was blowing 

 straight upon him. 



Having discovered undoubted evidence that the 

 Dotterel was nesting on this hill-top, we took advantage 

 of the first good day to have a more thorough search 

 of the ground. A different route was chosen for the 

 climb. At first our way led along the shores of a deep 

 hill loch which has yielded many a fine trout and an occa- 

 sional " ferox " and salmon, and as we started the ascent, 

 a Golden Eagle was seen to move quickly across the hill 

 opposite and to sail into the rock, where she had a full- 

 grown and hungry eaglet awaiting her arrival. At the 

 edge of the plateau where the Dotterel were nesting, the 

 ground sloped sharply away to a loch far beneath, and 

 on this precipitous hillside a pair of Peregrine Falcons 

 had a family of full-fledged young concealed away in a 

 chink in a rock. 



We were soon rewarded by success, for we had scarcely 

 reached the highest ground when we saw, moving as 

 rapidly as they could over the short vegetation, a couple 

 of young Dotterel. I marked one of these birds down, 

 but the little fellow sprinted ahead with considerable 

 speed, and doubled and swerved with such skill that it was 

 only after covering a good deal of ground that I was able 

 to capture him. I left him under my cap, and then set 

 out to catch the second small person. While I was photo- 

 graphing the two Dotterel chicks where I had placed them 

 together, the parent bird flew around in great distress, 

 repeatedly whistling in a soft, mournful key, but did not 

 venture so near as some of the other Dotterel I had ob- 



