268 Wild Life in Wales 



congener, it also varies its diet by occasionally picking 

 grains of wheat, or barley, from the fields in spring. I 

 have found grubs of the Crane-Fly (Tipula oleracea) in the 

 stomach of one killed, inland, in May ; and once shot one, 

 on the coast, which disgorged a small Butter-fish (Centronotus 

 gunnellus). Like the Curlew, it also feeds largely on slugs 

 and snails, when inland ; and swallows, whole, numbers of 

 Helix nemoralis. 



On the flat top of the steep, conical hill, above Tynycfn, 

 in threading my way through amongst a series of little pools 

 in the peat, I was agreeably surprised, one morning, to flush 

 a Dunlin, a bird I had not previously met with on the moors 

 here, although one or two had, from time to time, been 

 noticed on the margins of the lake, as well in summer as 

 during spring and autumn. Sitting down for half an hour, 

 I soon found that there were at least three pairs breeding 

 there ; and as I watched their entertaining frolics, and 

 listened to the tinkling purr of the males a song, by 

 the way, which always reminds me of a tiny alarum-clock 

 suddenly set going I could not help ruminating (as I had 

 often done before, under similar circumstances, further 

 north) upon the singular appropriateness of some of the 

 common names applied to this bird. My old friend, the 

 late Robert Gray, has remarked (Birds of the West of 

 Scotland) : " The Gaelic name of Pollaireun . . . signifying 

 c bird of the mud pits/ expresses in a single word its habits 

 better than any English or Scottish synonyme." Dunlin 

 (which from an early spelling as Dunling, Mr Harting J has 

 suggested might be a diminutive, like gosling or duckling) 

 is at once suggestive of the bird's colour. Mr Swainson 2 

 says : " Some derive the name from Gael. dun, a hill, and 

 linne, a pool ; because it frequents the dunes and pools by the 

 seaside " ; but if that derivation be accepted, I had rather 

 omit the reference to the seashore. Nothing could then 

 be more descriptive of the bird's fondness for frequenting 

 and nesting beside the little mossy pools near so many of 

 our mountain tops, just as this little colony are settled here. 



1 Zoologist, 1 88 1, p. 444. 



2 Folk-lore of British Birds. 



