84 BIRDS OP NORFOLK. 



of the bird on the spot, and, instead of translating it, 

 simply put down the English word* as it was given to 

 him." 



CHARADKIUS HIATICULA, Linnaeus. 

 BINGED PLOVER. 



The Einged Plover, one of our most interesting 

 indigenous species, may be said to possess, at least in 

 Norfolk and Suffolk, two distinct phases of existence, 

 being found, throughout the breeding season, not only 

 on the coast but on the great sandy warrens in the 

 interior, where its sprightly actions and melodious notes 

 enliven those dreary wastes from about the middle of 

 March up to the end of August, when young and old 

 again retire to the sea-shore and the mouths of our tidal 

 rivers, till the time once more arrives for this strange 

 inland migration. To Mr. Salmon's notes in 1836 

 ("Mag. Nat. Hist.," vol. ix., p. 522) on the habits of 

 these birds in the neighbourhood of Thetford (as quoted 

 by Yarrell and other authors), I am enabled to add the 

 following particulars from the more recent observations 

 of Mr. Alfred Newton in the same district " The ringed 



* That the word dotterel is " peculiarly English," I have the 

 authority of Mr. W. Aldis Wright, the librarian of Trinity College, 

 Cambridge and editor of Shakespear, who, in a letter to Mr. Alfred 

 Newton, gives as the earliest instances of its occurrence, Drayton's 

 " Polyolbion," song xxv. 1., 345 ; and Bacon's " Natural History," 

 cent, iii., 236. The former first published in 1622, the latter in 

 1627. As further evidence, also, of its English origin, he quotes the 

 following passage, under the head of Lincolnshire, from " Camden's 

 Britannia [Holland's translation, 1637 ; the same passage occuring, 

 as well, in the Latin edition, 1607], " dotterels, so named of their 

 dolish foolishnesse, which, being a kind of birds as it were of an 

 apish kinde, ready to imitate what they see done, are caught by 

 candle light according to fowler'a gesture." 



