SCOLOPACIDAE—DUNLIN.
245
pair at Tilbury ; very fine and black," and on the same date in the following year,
several on Canvey Point, while the day after he notes " a few about East Point,
Foulness," and he shot one in perfect summer plumage. In some years, he saw
them even later : thus on June 6th, 1837, he saw " a few about Canvey Point,"
and shot a female with enlarged eggs ; while on June 15th he says three were
shot on Yantlet. One of these which he examined was a non-breeding female
in bad plumage. Such birds, he says, not unfrequently occur in most species of
shore-birds. He usually noted their return in autumn about the middle of July
or sometimes even a little earlier : thus, 1833 : July 12, " saw one ; " 18th, " saw
several old ones." 1835: July 15, "saw two old ones;" 17th, a lot on the
sands." 1838, July 14 : " Twenty, or more, old birds on the sands." As to their
swimming powers he writes : when sitting at the
" edge of the flowing tide, they will frequently suffer the water to reach their
bellies, and even to float them, before they move. This, I have often noticed, more
particularly when they are sitting among the grass on the saltings, where they will
let the tide take them off their legs and [will] paddle across the little guts that
lay in their way." Again he says :
" Sept. 24th, 1835.—Watching some to-day on the salterns at tide-time, to
observe their habits, I saw them two or three times voluntarily take to the water
and swim across the little guts that lay in their way and wading up to their
bellies, bibling in the water among the saltern grass. I have before seen them
swim decently when winged, but not from choice."
Mr. Clarke mentions one in the Audley End Collection, shot there on Dec. 15th,
1844, and another, in summer plumage, shot beside the pond at " The Roos " on
Apr. 22nd, 1854 (24). In the Collection at Audley End, too, is a specimen in full
breeding plumage, shot there on May 5th, 1864. In 1859, one was shot at Great
Canfield (Stacey). King, in 1838, says (20) : " I have once or twice noticed
immense flocks of these birds skimming over our low meadows [at Sudbury] dur-
ing floods, most probably intermixed with other species of Tringa common on the
coast, [such] as the Pigmy Curlew, Ring Dotterell and Sanderling." In 1865
Lieut. Legge says (34. 91) they began to arrive on the coast near Shoebury about
the end of August, and continued to increase in number until November, when,
they had " attained to the vast numbers which frequent the coast always
in the winter." Specimens shot on Oct. 7th were still partially in summer dress,
but others killed a fortnight later had assumed the full winter plumage. They
fed, he says, mostly on the mud-flats left bare at low water, often in company with
the Ring Dotterell, roosting like them on the beach. At high water, they packed
into vast flocks and wheeled about in the air, often at a great height. Mr. Sackett
describes it as "common enough on the Mucking Flats in the winter, often flying
in great clouds." He adds, " a few seem to stay all the year round." The Rev.
J. C. Atkinson writes (36. 132) : " The Dunlin, always called ' Oxbird ' where my
boyhood was spent, and often seen there in flocks of not simply hundreds, but
thousands and many thousands, in the autumn and winter, goes to the far north to
breed." In an important paper on " Reason and Instinct," Mr. Atkinson has
written (23. 5465) :—
" How often, too, on the oozes of the Essex Coast may tens of thousands
of the there-called Oxbird be seen in a flock, and with them Redshanks,
a few Grey Plover, Ring Dotterel, &c. The whole spring together, fly to-
gether, wheel together, presenting to the spectator this moment a sheet of
brilliant white, and the next, as they execute one of their marvellous turns,
nothing but a dusky cloud of rapidly moving dark objects. All this would be
not simply unintelligible, but impossible, except on the supposition that they
have some feathered fugleman to give the word and the time, and that their