124 BIRDS OF GUERNSEY. 



on the subject in the ' Zoologist ' for 1866, which 

 gives the time of their arrival pretty correctly. 

 During the first two or three weeks after my arrival 

 that was on the 21st of June, 1866 I found Eing 

 Dotterels excessively scarce even on parts of the 

 coast, where, on other visits later in the year, I had 

 found them very numerous. Towards the middle 

 of July, however, they began to frequent their usual 

 haunts in small parties of six or seven, most 

 probably the old birds with their young. These 

 parties increased in number to twenty or thirty, and 

 before my departure, on the last day of July, they 

 mustered quite as thickly as I had ever seen them 

 before. On another summer visit to Guernsey, 

 from the 3rd to the 19th of June, 1876, I did not 

 see any Eing Dotterel at all, though at the time 

 Kentish Plover were common in most of the bays 

 in the low parts of the Island. The Eing Dotterel 

 must therefore have selected some- breeding-place 

 separate from the Kentish Plover, probably not very 

 far off ; but I do not believe it breeds at all commonly 

 in the Islands. This agrees very much with what 

 I saw of the Eing Dotterel this year (1878) ; there 

 were a few in L'Ancresse and one or two other bays, 

 but none in Grand Havre, close to which I was 

 living, and I very much doubt if any of those I saw 

 were breeding. Neither Colonel 1'E strange nor I 

 found any eggs, though we searched hard for them 

 both in '76 and '78 ; neither did we find any 

 either in Herm or Alderney. 



