BIRDS OF THE HUMBER DISTRICT. 91 



from the fully mature bird to others in the winter 

 dress, may be found in each flock. 



A peculiarity of this species, shared also by the 

 Lapwing, is their extreme restlessnes before wind and 

 rain, when for hours together they will often continue 

 flying to and fro over the marshes. 



146. CHARADRIUS MORINELLUS, Linnaeus. Dotterel. 



Provincial. Spring-Dotterel. 



An occasional spring and autumn visitant, arriving in 

 certain favourite localities on the North Wolds about 

 the third or fourth week in April, and in the Humber 

 marshes during the first week in May*, where they 

 continue till about the third week, and then finally 

 depart northward. They are extremely partial to 

 those pastures which are most closely grazed with 

 sheep ; and I do not recollect ever seeing them in our 

 best feeding-marshes, which, being " laid in " during 

 the winter, as a rule, are full of grass f. 



Twenty or thirty years since, as I am informed by 

 one of the oldest of our local gunners, the Dotterel 

 was of common and yearly occurrence in the North 



* Have only once observed it before this date namely, on the 

 15th of April, 1867, a single bird. 



t Mr. J. Edmund Harting informs me that, in the stomach of 

 a Dotterel shot in the Cotes marshes in the spring of 1869, he 

 found remains of Coleoptera, larvae of Coleoptera, wings of 

 Diptera, larvae of Lepidoptera (the moth Polyodon), and small 

 particles of grit. In the stomach of another bird examined at 

 the same time were no less than sixty-three wireworms and 

 two small beetles. 



