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 observationf 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. 



f 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. * * * I have never noticed this lird 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." 



