2 CIIAEADRIIDyE. 



during several days spent in visiting all the most likely ground. It is not quite 

 clear why the Dotterel should be leaving the district, for it has apparently few 

 enemies now, whilst formerly, when it was more numerous, it had many. Years 

 ago it Avas quite the custom amongst the miners to have a day's Dotterel shooting, 

 and through the shepherds or the miners seeing them when going to their work, it 

 soon got abroad when the Dotterel had arrived in spring, and every fellow who 

 could procure the loan of a gun would have a day ' mangt Dotterel,' whilst they 

 were as tame as barn-door fowls, and before they had distributed themselves 

 over the fells. But now, through the mines being mostly closed, the gun tax, 

 the extermination of vermin, and anglers using feathers for artificial flies that are 

 but little inferior to those of the Dotterel, and more easily procured, one can 

 hardly understand their scarcity. 



" Mr. Heysham's paper in the ' Magazine of Natural History ' for 1838 has 

 become a classic, and been quoted in extenso by nearly every writer on British 

 birds since ; but it is rather misleading, as the late James Cooper, curator of the 

 Warrington Museum, wrote in the ' Zoologist,' 1 861, and cannot be taken as a guide 

 to those who intend to look for the eggs, for nest there is none : ' The birds do not 

 select the summits of the highest mountains, nor do they lay their eggs where the 

 fringe moss grows, but in a depression upon short dense grass, a little below the 

 summit.' This, I may say, is correct, and quite tallies with my own observations, 

 for I have generally found Dotterel frequenting the upper slopes of the highest 

 mountains, and the summits of the spurs of the highest mountains, but not the 

 summits of the highest mountains. The Dotterel only lays three eggs. When 

 disturbed, the Dotterel usually runs off its eggs to a little distance, and is mute ; 

 but occasionally, if the eggs are hard sat, it will flutter off" its nest as if wounded, 

 and remain calling within about twenty yards, uttering a note which is somewhat 

 like that of the Golden Plover, but much lower. After the young are hatched, the 

 parent birds behave quite differently, and exhibit great anxiety for their safety. 

 All the eggs I have taken I took in June, but that they sometimes lay at the end 

 of May, and even in July, is evident, as I have found eggs hard sat the first week 

 in June, and seen young ones then. On several occasions I have come across 

 young in July. James Cooper, who is alluded to above, was employed as a 

 collector by Mr. Heysham, and was the ' able assistant ' spoken of by him in his 

 account of the Dotterel. Cooper was a remarkable man and deserves a passing 

 notice. He it was who really discovered the first eggs of the Dotterel on White- 

 side. He was a man avIio seemed capable of enduring any amount of fatigue. 

 On the 28th of June, 18o5, he walked from Carlisle to Whiteside, a distance of 

 between thirty and forty miles, where he arrived late in the afternoon. He had 



