106.  RING DOTTEREL. AEgialitis hiaticula, Linnaeus.  French, “Grand pluvier a collier,” “Pluvier a collier.”—­The Ring Dotterel is very common in all the Islands in places suited to it.  Some remain throughout the summer, and a few of these, but certainly very few, may breed in the Islands; the great majority, however, of those that frequent the coast in the winter are migrants, arriving in the autumn and departing again in the spring.  Some, however, appear to arrive very early, and cannot have bred very far off, perhaps on the neighbouring coast of France or Dorset.  I have the following note on the subject in the ‘Zoologist’ for 1866, which gives the time of their arrival pretty correctly.  During the first two or three weeks after my arrival—­that was on the 21st of June, 1866—­I found Ring Dotterels excessively scarce even on parts of the coast, where, on other visits later in the year, I had found them very numerous.  Towards the middle of July, however, they began to frequent their usual haunts in small parties of six or seven, most probably the old birds with their young.  These parties increased in number to twenty or thirty, and before my departure, on the last day of July, they mustered quite as thickly as I had ever seen them before.  On another summer visit to Guernsey, from the 3rd to the 19th of June, 1876, I did not see any Ring Dotterel at all, though at the time Kentish Plover were common in most of the bays in the low parts of the Island.  The Ring Dotterel must therefore have selected some breeding-place separate from the Kentish Plover, probably not very far off; but I do not believe it breeds at all commonly in the Islands.  This agrees very much with what I saw of the Ring Dotterel this year (1878); there were a few in L’Ancresse and one or two other bays, but none in Grand Havre, close to which I was living, and I very much doubt if any of those I saw were breeding.  Neither Colonel l’Estrange nor I found any eggs, though we searched hard for them both in ’76 and ’78; neither did we find any eggs either in Herm or Alderney.

Professor Ansted includes the Ring Dotterel in his list, but marks it as only occurring in Guernsey.  There is a specimen in the Museum.

107.  KENTISH PLOVER. AEgialitis cantianus, Latham.  French, “Pluvier a collier interrompu.”  I have always looked upon the Kentish Plover as only a summer visitant to the Islands, never having seen it in any of my visits in October and November; but Mr. Harvie Brown mentions (’Zoologist’ for 1869) seeing some of these birds in January, at Herm, feeding with the Ring Dotterel, but he says they always separated when they rose to fly.  If he is not mistaken, which my own experience inclines me to think he was, we must look upon the Kentish Plover as partially resident in the Islands, the greater number, however, departing in the autumn.  Until this summer (1878) I have been unsuccessful in finding the eggs of the Kentish Plover, though I have had