The Dotterel.

Dotterel. Mike Watson



Sad isn't it....if you go back in time to around 90 years ago you would find in the 1920's the numbers of Dotterel were beginning to show signs of a slight recovery from the days even further back in time when annual slaughters of the species were taking place in areas like Pilling and Winmarleigh when - according to Mitchell - 'hundreds' were being shot each year. It is interesting that the same F.S.Mitchell reported very few records from the fells, adding to this remark that they no longer appear on Pendle Hill. 

Thankfully today quite the reverse is the case and Pendle Hill plays host on an annual basis to this familiar and amazingly tame spring migrant which shows a remarkable fidelity to its staging areas, sometimes even to the very same field. Ward Stone is another example of an annual - or near annual - area where Dotterel can be found and in fact breeding was reported here in 1983.  

By the end of the 1990's the estimate of breeding Dotterel in Great Britain was put at 630 incubating males, which incidentally represents the sex role reversal of this species of bird where the female takes little if any part in the incubation of the clutch, and rarely if ever assisting in brood-care though she is known to maybe rejoin the family once well grown. The breeding range is largely confined to the summits of our highest and most remote hills most of which are in the Scottish Highlands, though small outposts are also know for example in Cumbria. Some estimates in N.Europe are of 17,000 pairs in Norway, 5,000 in Sweden, and 2,000 in Finland.

Dotterel. Brian Rafferty

As someone who constantly claims to have a passion for birds and birding, I'm pretty well ashamed to confess to never having got off my backside to go and see the Dotterel during the spring passage, always seeming to be 'doing some other birding' at the time. This spring appears to have been a good one with birds seen on Fairsnape Fell, Pendle Hill, and currently birds still on Champion Moor as I write....so whats my excuse this time!  

Thanks to Mike for his photograph of the Dotterel on Champion Moor, and to Brian for his on Fairsnape Fell. Please use the links to visit their websites.