356 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND 



number of this Plover visiting the Lake Mountains corresponds 

 with the scarcity which has marked the visits of the Dotterel to 

 the salt marshes of Lancashire and the Solway Firth in recent 

 years. Percival, an aged native of Kockliffe, recollects the time 

 when considerable numbers visited Eockliffe marsh on passage 

 in May, though they never remained more than a few days. He 

 also informed me that a brother of John Allen was nicknamed 

 ' The Dotterel ' by his associates, from his prowess in slaughter- 

 ing these poor birds for the angling world. They have often 

 been killed on Burgh marsh. Mcol recollects an old gentleman, 

 a great fisherman, who used to kill some of these birds every 

 spring in a field near Silloth, in order to send their skins to 

 some friends fishing the Eden. The Manns used to observe 

 (and sometimes shoot) these birds near Allonby, so that they 

 are, or were, found all along the line of the Solway on migration, 

 though always local, if not actually to be termed rare. The 

 month of May has always been the time of their arrival on the 

 Solway, generally between the 10th and 20th. This year 

 (1891), for example, a Burgh fisherman (who in his lifetime 

 has shot thirty or forty of these birds for fly-dressing) fell in 

 with two small flocks of Dotterel, numbering respectively six 

 and four birds, on the 14th of May. Following the evil 

 custom formerly in vogue, and not yet obsolete, he fetched a 

 gun, and, falling in again with the flock of four birds, he killed 

 three at a shot, and dropped the fourth with a broken wing as 

 the poor bird wheeled round. Hoping to obtain a higher price 

 from a naturalist than from the fly-dressers, he sent the birds to 

 me, and seemed not a little surprised to hear that I would 

 gladly have given him a sovereign to let the birds pass un- 

 harmed. 1 The other six were fortunately wilder, but on the 

 18th of the month one of the party flew close past us, looking 

 finer and smaller than a Golden Plover, and flying across the 



intimate knowledge of that portion of Lakeland which is situated in 

 Westmorland, informs us that he found three pairs of Dotterels nesting 

 on the mountains in 1889, '90, and '91. In the former years he found and 

 respected their nests with eggs. In 1891 he and Mr. John Young, F.Z.S., 

 found three different broods of young birds in company with their parents. 

 1 The only consolation is that these birds have been mounted for the 

 County Museum. 



