104 NATURE AND SPORT IN SOUTH AFRICA 



Of old there was a curious legend — very generally 

 accepted among country-folk — that this bird faith- 

 fully imitated the movements of the fowler, and so 

 usually ended by becoming snared in the nets. So 

 widely accepted was this idea, that Drayton in his 

 Polyolbion has several lines descriptive of the 

 dotterel's silly ways. And Bacon says of it : " In 

 catching of dotterels we see how the foolish bird 

 playeth the ape in gestures." The idea probably 

 arose from the plover-like habit of feinting and 

 tumbling in the air close to the fowler's head, in 

 which way, possibly, an occasional bird ensnared 

 itself. The dotterel plover, by the way, is, unlike 

 others of its relatives, not a South African visitant. 



The ringed plover or ringed dotterel, a well- 

 known British shore bird of small but extremely 

 handsome form and marking, which is found as 

 far south as the Cape of Good Hope, is also 

 noticeable for its clever use of stratagems to divert 

 the passer-by from its nest ; its sharp note of alarm 

 and suspicion is characteristically plover-like. 



One of the most useful members of the great 

 family of plovers is Nordmann's Pratincole {Gla- 

 reola nordmanni) , a species belonging to the sub- 

 family of Glarcolinm or Pratincoles. This bird, a 

 great favourite among South African farmers, seems 

 tc exist solely for one object — that of destroying 

 or helping to destroy the devastating swarms of 



