BIRDS OF DUMFRIESSHIRE 
the XX j. day of December, to ane man brocht quik 
cranes and quik pertrikis to the King fra WiUiam Cunyng- 
hame of Drumfries,. . .Vs. Extracted from 'Accounts of 
the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland,' 8vo, Edinburgh 
(Government PubHcation) 1900, Vol. II., p. 411." The 
Heron was frequently termed the Crane," and the 
validity of this record is therefore questionable, though 
none the less interesting. 
The Crane is beheved to have bred in East Anglia until 
about 1590, and tiU a later date was a regular winter- 
visitant ; but its visits to the British Isles from the Continent 
are nowadays irregular and rare.] 
THE DOTTEREL. Eudromias morinellus (Linnaeus). 
Local name — Dotterel-Plover. 
A very rare spring-visitor. 
Formerly an annual visitant to this county, the Dotterel 
has long since ceased to be anything but a very rare spring 
visitor, and at no time is it believed to have been numerous. 
In 1795 we read in a Hst of " migratory birds " com- 
piled by the Rev. John Russel, Minister of Canonbie : 
" The curlew appears in the higher situations, bordering 
upon Castleton and Ewes ; and also the plover, dotterel, 
and fieldfare."* Sir WiUiam Jardine, writing of the birds 
of the parish of Applegarth and Sibbaldbie, says : " The 
common Dotterel was met with last spring " (i.e., 1831) " in 
a flock of about twenty birds "t ; and some ten years later 
he writes of this species in his Naturalist's Library : ''In 
our own district, there is a locaHty on some subalpine moor- 
land, partiaUy cultivated, which is visited during their 
passage in spring, but we have not been able to trace them 
on their return migration." Sir WiUiam goes on to describe 
* Stat. Acct. Scot., Vol. XIV., p. 413. 
t New Stat. Acct. Scot., Vol. IV., p. 181. 
