CHAPTER XXIII 



THE DOTTEREL OF THE HIGH TOPS 



MOST fearless, as perhaps most charming, of all birds 

 who have their homes about the high tops is the true 

 dotterel. Compared with that dweller of the coast, 

 the ringed dotterel, which is numerous throughout the British 

 Isles, the bird under notice is rare, for there are certainly 

 fewer than one hundred pairs in all Scotland, and at the 

 outside but half a dozen pairs south of the Border. 



So confiding is this graceful wader that in the Gaelic 

 language he is known as "An t-Amadan Mointeach," or 

 "the fool of the peat moss," his absurd tameness seem- 

 ing to the Highlander to mark him as a bird devoid of 

 sense. 



But the dotterel is by no means a fool, although his eggs 

 would be safer from the collectors who are so often on his 

 track were he to borrow 5>ome of the wariness and cunning 

 of the golden plover. 



The dotterel is without exception the highest-nesting bird 

 in Britain. Wintering far to the south of these islands, he 

 nevertheless chooses as a nesting-ground the topmost slopes 

 of the loftiest hills — expanses of wind-swept ground, too 

 high for even the hardy ptarmigan or the elusive snow 

 bunting. 



Personally, I have never come across a dotterel nesting 

 below the 3,000-foot line, and during June, 1920, had 

 under observation a nest almost exactly 4,000 feet above the 

 level of the sea, where, up to the third week in May, the 

 winter's snow remained unbroken. Even during a fortnight 

 in June, when in the glens beneath the air was warm and 



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