g6 BOOTH : natterer's bat in Yorkshire. 



look after them. He informed me that lately he shot a bird 

 Dotterel [sic], which on opening he found contained an egg, which 

 puts the matter out of dispute. He informs me that for the last 

 four years the bird has become more plentiful, which is to be 

 wondered at, considering that immediately upon its being ascertained 

 that they have arrived, everyone that can raise a gun is after them. 

 . . . About the 15th or i6th of last month [? May 1832], a flock of 

 nine or ten arrived. One of our men shot two of them.' 



Robinson appears to have taken an active interest in assisting 

 Heysham, for on the 29th of August the same year, 1832, Heysham 

 received a couple of Dotterel shot on Woofell, with a note, in which 

 the following passage occurs : — ■' I have been repeatedly on the 

 mountains during the summer, but could never meet with any 

 [Dotterel]. I think that there is little doubt that they leave us in 

 the spring and return again in September, and remain a little wliile 

 with us, prior to leaving our island for the winter. I would suppose 

 that they [the birds despatched with the letter] are male and female 

 or a young and an old bird. I am sorry one of them is hurt 

 in the plumage round the neck. You will see, by the map of York- 

 shire, that Woofel is very high land.' 



The foregoing is all the information relating to the Dotterel in 

 Yorkshire that I have hitherto unearthed in excavating — so to speak 

 — the ornithology contained in the correspondence of the late 

 T. C. Heysham, placed in my hands by his relatives. Let me con- 

 clude with two short passages, one relating to Norfolk, the other to 

 London. In a letter written from Yarmouth on iMarch 25///, 1843, 

 Mr. \V. R. Fisher informs Heysham : — ' I saw . . . two or three 

 Dotterel this morning at a dealer's in Yarmouth.' In a second 

 letter of April 25th, 1843, Mr. Fisher adds : ' It was Charadrius 

 moriiieUus, and not the C. hiaticnla. I mentioned it, because, as you 

 observe, I thought it was earlier than usual.' In a letter dated from 

 Ryder Street, St. James, September 7th, 1845, Yarrell remarks to 

 Heysham : ' Dotterel were more numerous last spring in the London 

 markets than usual; I counted seventeen couples at the shop of one 

 poulterer's at one time.' This latter incident was embodied in 

 Yarrell's ' British Birds.' 



NOTE— MAMMALIA. 



Natterer's Bat at Bingley, Yorkshire. — Towards the close of last summer 

 I obtained, through a friend, a specimen of a Bat from the belfry tower at Bingley, 

 which I have to thank Mr. Roebuck for identifying as Vcspertilio nattereri. 

 According to the Transactions of the Bradford Naturalists' Society, this makes the 

 first record of this species for Airedale. — Harry B. Booth, Frizinghall, Shipley, 



February 8th, 1890. 



Naturalist, 



