DOTTEREL. 81 
ment, nearly two hundred years before.* It is possible, 
therefore, that when far more plentiful than they are 
now, their visits were spread over a longer space of 
time; separate “trips” arriving and departing again at 
intervals from the end of March up to the middle of 
May. It is also somewhat remarkable that, during the 
last sixteen or seventeen years, I have never seen a 
single dotterel, in autumn, either in our poulterers’ or 
birdstuffers’ shops, but both Mr. Newcome and Mr. 
Alfred Newton assure me that a few still visit the 
warrens in August, though, perhaps staying only a day 
or two, they thus escape observationt—a fact the more 
probable as at that time of year the warrens are little 
frequented, and in parts overgrown with brakes, among 
which the birds seek shelter from the sun in very hot 
weather. 
In the dotterel, as in the phalaropes, the females 
are said to be the brightest in plumage, a statement 
which I have never had the opportunity of testing for 
myself, but Mr. Newcome assures me he has found such 
to be the case, and Mr. Newton’s testimony is to the 
same effect. 
* Mr. Salmon, in 1836 (“ Mag. Nat. Hist.” vol. ix., pp. 520, 525), 
gives the date of their appearance in autumn, in the neighbourhood 
of Thetford, as “the end of August or beginning of September.” 
In Pennant’s “ British Zoology” (1761), dotterel are also said to 
make their appearance on Lincoln-heath and on the moors of 
Derbyshire “ in small flocks of eight or ten, only in the latter part 
of April, and stay there all May and part of June,” and to be taken 
in the months of April and September, on the Wiltshire and 
Berkshire downs. 
+ M. Julian Deby, in his “Notes on the birds of Belgium” 
(* Zoologist,” 1846, p. 1251), remarks that “the dotterel is not 
a summer resident in Belgium, and is only seen during the two first 
months of autumn. * * * T have never noticed this bird on its 
return in spring, which inclines me to believe that it must follow 
some other migratory route at this season to that it pursues in 
autumn.” 
M 
