BIRDS 357 



marsh with more distinctly separated beats of the wing. On 

 dissecting the dead birds, we found that the dullest in colour 

 was a male, and the brightest was a female. The other male 

 and female agreed exactly in appearance, though the ovary 

 of the female was rather more advanced than that of the 

 brighter bird, and the bones seemed to be those of an older bird, 

 judging from their comparative hardness. 1 Their stomachs were 

 crammed with a small species of beetle, which the Rev. F. O. 

 Pickard-Cambridge kindly identified as Chrysomela hyperici. The 

 weight of a Dotterel is about four and a half ounces. The 

 local fishermen and other persons accustomed to shoot Dotterel 

 always maintain that it is useless to look for the birds earlier than 

 May. There cannot, however, be any question that stragglers 

 in some rare instances appear in Lakeland during the month of 

 April, and even in March. I have a skin of this Dotterel 

 obtained by Sir W. Jardine in Dumfriesshire in March. In 

 1890 a newly-killed Dotterel was sent in the flesh to Carlisle 

 on the 22nd of March, and was bought within half-an-hour of 

 its arrival by an amateur fisherman, the applications of the 

 professional fly-dressers arriving too late. In 1885 Mr. Smith 

 of Rockliffe received in the flesh a Dotterel, which was too far 

 gone to preserve, on the 26th of April, and must, therefore, 

 have been killed (on one of the Lake Mountains) about the 

 middle of the month. Elliot killed another Dotterel on Mel- 

 merby fell in the month of April. Mr. W. R. Fisher wrote 

 to T. C. Heysham from Yarmouth, on the 25th of March 1843: 

 ' I saw . . . two or three Dotterel this morning at a dealer's in 

 Yarmouth.' Heysham asked him, in reply, whether he meant 

 to refer to Ringed Plovers, commonly called Ringed Dotterel, 

 as the date was very early for the true Dotterel to have arrived 

 in England. Mr. Fisher wrote back : ' It was Charadrius mori- 

 nellus, and not C. hiaticula. I mentioned it because, as you 

 observe, I thought it was earlier than usual.' I have never 

 met with the Dotterel on autumnal migration, nor do I know 



1 Mr. Rawson, who has spent many hours in the closest scrutiny of 

 breeding Dotterel, is disposed to think that the males are usually the 

 brightest birds, or at any rate that the more dull-coloured individuals are 

 those which exhibit most solicitude for the safety of the young in down. 



