26 
DOTTEREL. 
For on you creep, or cower, or lie, or stoop, or go, 
So, marking you with care, the apish bird doth do; 
And acting every thing, doth never mark the net.’ 
Montagu observes, that when disturbed, it frequently raises 
one wing up, which may perhaps have given rise to the 
popular notion. 
In Yorkshire these neat birds were formerly common on 
the Wolds, as testified, ‘exempli gratia,’ by the house called 
the ‘Dotterel Inn,’ erected, as Henry Eustatius Strickland, 
Esq., of Apperley Court, near Tewkesbury, has informed me, 
by one of the family, and the sign painted by Mrs. Strickland. 
In my parish of Nafferton, a few are annually met with on 
their passage to and fro; I have one of a pair which were 
shot within a few hundred yards of the Vicarage, by Mr. John 
Dickson, of this place, and by him presented to me; and 
another, one of three killed at a shot, by a farm servant 
of his, on the wold, above the village, in May, 1852. They 
remain two or three weeks, resorting to the fallows and open 
districts; very few, however, now come, compared with those 
that used to visit these parts. They are occasionally met with 
on the moors about Halifax, in spring and early summer, and 
sometimes come to breed on the Marsden and SIaithwaite 
Moors, are also rare near Sheffield, and very rare near Leeds, 
as is not to be wondered at. One was shot at Staincross, near 
Barnsley, in 1880. They are also met with in Derbyshire, 
Wiltshire, Berkshire, Hertfordshire, Lancashire, Suffolk, and 
on the Mendip Hills, in Somersetshire, where they are said to 
breed; and the Downs in Wiltshire. About Swinhope, says 
the Bev. B. P. Alington, Dotterels are local, arriving half-yearly 
at particular spots, during their migration to breed. One 
locality is at North Summer Coats, not far from the wintry 
railway station of ‘Great Coats,’ on the estate of Henry 
Alington Pye, Esq. In Dorsetshire, on Portland and near 
Weymouth, John Garland, Esq. has informed me that a few 
annually occur. In Norfolk it is rather rare. One, a male, 
was killed near Wisbeach, Cambridgeshire, the 9th. of May, 
1850, by flying against the telegraph wires on the Eastern 
Counties Bail way; a female was shot on the following day 
on Guyhirn Wash, and a pair on Bottisham Pen in May, 
1851; others have been met with near Cambridge and Boyston. 
In Cornwall it is rare, but has occurred at Bar Point, Gwyllyn 
Vase, and other places. 
