80 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 



winter are then paired, and in another month would be 

 breeding. The destruction, then, in the spring passage 

 of a single bird is equivalent to the destruction of a 

 whole brood. The gunners, however, who obtain a 

 shilHng a piece for them, have no scruples on this score, 

 and though in cold or wet weather the dotterel are wary 

 enough, on a fine sunny day, as Mr. Alfred Newton 

 informs me, nearly the whole " trip " may be secured at 

 repeated shots. 



In connection also, of late years, with their brief 

 stay in this county, is the far later period at which they 

 arrive in spring (presuming, of course, that our earlier 

 records are correct), appearing now, almost invariably, 

 during the second and third week of May,"^ when the 

 chief bulk of our passing migrants — ^knots, godwits, grey- 

 plover, and many others — pay a hurried visit to our 

 shores, and, impelled by natural instincts, push onwards 

 as quickly as possible to their northern breeding grounds. 

 Yet, in 1843, Mr. W. E. Fisher, in " A note on the times 

 of arrival of the summer birds of passage at Yarmouth" 

 (" Zoologist," p. 248), gives the 25th of March as the 

 date of Charadrius morinellus ; and in Messrs. Gurney 

 and Fisher's "List," in 1846 ("Zoologist," p. 1319) it 

 is described as appearing in March and September, 

 which agrees exactly with Sir Thomas Browne's state- 



* Mr. Cordeaus, writing of this species, in North Lincolnshire 

 (" Zoologist," 1867, p. 808), records the occurrence of a single 

 dotterel on the 15th of April, as the only one he has ever seen so 

 early ; remarking that these birds " invariably make their appear- 

 ance in those years, when they do visit this neighbourhood, during 

 the first week in May." In a previous note, also, on the same 

 species ("Zoologist," 1866, p. 294), he says, referring to their 

 former abundance in the North Lincolnshire marshes, in May, 

 " From some cause or other their numbers have gradually 

 decreased, and, previous to this spring, four or five years have 

 elapsed without my seeing even a single bird." 



