76 BRITISH BIRDS' NESTS. 



recent years only a solitary pair or two have been 

 known to attempt to do so, and I fear they have 

 been promptly robbed. I think the greed of the 

 fly-fisher has for ever sealed its doom so far as 

 England is concerned. I am myself an ardent fly- 

 fisher, and have been offered handsome sums 

 of money in my artificial fly-dressing days if I 

 would only procure the skin of this bird, whose 

 feathers are popularly supposed to exercise a 

 kind of charm over trout in some northern districts. 



COMMON DOTTEREL ON NEST. 



Materials. None as a rule, although a few bits 

 of lichen and dead grass were in the nest figured 

 in our illustration. The eggs are simply deposited 

 in a slight declivity trodden in the place selected. 



Eggs. Three, yellowish-olive to dark cream 

 in ground-colour, thickly blotched and spotted 

 with dark brown or brownish-black. Size about 

 1.65 by 1.15 in. (See Plate VII.) 



Time. May, June, and July. Although the 

 species breeds late, chicks are sometimes running 

 about by the middle of June, and a Highland keeper 

 on one occasion told me he had found a nest con- 

 taining fresh eggs on the 26th of July. 



