Williamson's Weekly Notes - Nov 11 2009

Even then, only one may pass through Sussex. More likely none. Where have all the dotterels gone?

Well, I expect Henry VIII swallowed several. As did every other king, queen, courtier, count, lord, baron and banker over centuries of feasting on the feathery fruits of the earth.

I myself have only ever seen two of them.

One was struggling around a ploughed field in Kent all by itself as it wended its way from Africa to the Cairngorms.

It had to avoid the attentions of twenty other twitchers with telescopes.

The other was in Scotland in June, down a deep, deep, corrie where the midsummer wind howled like a Dickensian blizzard. In autumn it trudges the airways all the way back to darkest Africa again.

And it is quite a tiny little tot for that; not much bigger than a ring plover.

So why do I say this is the last possible date before the return?

Well, November 11 is the last Sussex date ever recorded, but that was in 1875.

The old place to see this strange wader in Sussex was on the downs, always close to the coast.

I think it would attract the attention of even the most casual and unacquainted observer.

That big white stripe on the head for example: would it attract your attention on your average plod over the downs with your family over the weekend? Possibly.

More unusual would be its tameness, often allowing you to be within a few yards. It used to be called "stupid bird".

Dotterel meant "dotty", and the latin name morinellus meant stupidity.

Simply because it was trusting, allowing close approach.

And that is why it is now so rare. There is a record of scores being taken by clap-nets on Salisbury Plain two centuries ago.

Dotterels were on the mediaeval banquet menus, and centuries before that, in common with wheatears and skylarks.

The species could stand that but with the invention of the gun, the end was swift.

Then there was the fantasy over the feathers, and the charm they held for fly-fishers who imagined these had some magical properties to lure trout from out of their hidey-holes under the bank.

The naturalist Cherry Kearton writing over a century ago, told how he was offered "a handsome sum of money" for a dotterel's skin complete with every feather, by fly fishermen. He sensibly declined.

This arctic-alpine species is today limited to about 100 pairs in the UK, but is found much more commonly on the dry tundra and fellfields of Asia and Scandinavia.