248 ENGLISH LAKE DISTRICT FISHERIES 



Council to give this interesting species special pro- 

 tection during the breeding season. The following 

 quotation explains the persecution which the dot- 

 terel at one time experienced in the Lake District : 

 " Years ago it was quite the custom amongst the 

 miners to have a day's dotterel shooting, and 

 through the shepherds or the miners seeing them 

 when going to their work, it soon got abroad when 

 the dotterel had arrived in spring, and every man 

 who could procure the loan of a gun would have a 

 day ' 'mangt dotterel,' whilst they were as tame as 

 barn-door fowls, and before they had distributed 

 themselves over the fells. But now, through the 

 mines being mostly closed, the gun-tax, the exter- 

 mination of vermin, and anglers using feathers for 

 artificial flies that are but little inferior to those of 

 the dotterel and more easily procured, one can 

 hardly understand their scarcity." In the writer's 

 opinion [the dotterel's decrease is almost entirely 

 due to the great demand for skins. The birds were 

 mainly shot either on their spring or autumnal 

 migration, and at the former season I remember an 

 instance when seventeen birds were bagged in a 

 morning. The large price offered for the skins 

 acted as a prize for the dotterel's extermination ; 

 and some years ago a quarryman had a dog which 

 was trained to find the nests. It is probable that 

 the virtue of flies dressed from dotterel's feathers 

 has always been exaggerated, and in my own 

 opinion a good imitation (from a starling's wing) 

 almost invariably proves as killing ; and this is the 

 opinion of most Lake District anglers. Upon one 

 occasion the police authorities handed me four skins 

 taken from a poacher, and although I used the pick 

 of the feathers the flies did not prove specially deadly. 



