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 
shilling 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. R. 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. 1819) it 
is described as appearing in March and September, 
which agrees exactly with Sir Thomas Browne’s state- 
* Mr. Cordeaux, 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.” 
