LJMICOL^. ( 210 ) CHARADRIID&. 



THE DOTTEREL. 



Charadrius morinellus. 



The Dotterell, which we thinke a very daintie dish, 

 Whose taking makes such sport, as man no more can wish ; 

 For as you creepe, or cowre, or lye, or stoupe, or goe, 

 So marking you (with care) the apish bird doth doe, 

 And acting everything, doth never mark the net, 

 Till he be in the snare, which men for him have set. 



DRAYTON, Polyolbion. 



THE first notice of this interesting bird as occurring in 

 Berwickshire is in Sibbald's Scotia Illustrata, published in 

 1684, where the author states that it often comes to the 

 Merse : " Morinellus in Mercia frequens. In cibum expe- 

 titur, ob saporis prsestantiam." - 1 About seventy years after 

 the publication of the above-mentioned work, Bishop Gibson, 

 in his translation of Camden's Britannia, states, with refer- 

 ence to Berwickshire, that " about Bastenrig on the east 

 hand, and the Moristons and Mellerstoun Downs to the 

 west, they frequently take the Dotterel, a rare fowl, towards 

 the latter end of April and beginning of May." 2 Several 

 notices of this bird as being found in the county occur in 

 the Old Statistical Account of Scotland. The Eev. Abraham 

 Ker, who, in 1793, wrote the report on the parish of Nen- 

 thorn, mentions that "Dotterels appear in a little flock on 

 the muirs for a few weeks in June." 3 Mr. John Eenton 

 of Chesterbank, in his account of the parish of Coldingham 

 in 1794, says: "There are only two kinds of birds of 



1 Scotia Illustrata, sive Prodromus Ifistoria Natural-is, auctore Roberto Sibbaldo, 

 M.A., Eq. Aur., Edinburgh, 1684, fol., p. 19. 



2 Third edition, London, 1753, vol. ii. col. 1180. 



3 The Statistical Account of Scotland, by Sir John Sinclair, Bart., vol. vi. p. 337. 



