Chance to spot a dotterel
If the sight of a ring ouzel is rare on our South Downs in autumn a view of a dotterel deserves a champagne celebration. Yet again this is just possible on the high hills here in Sussex. Look for a small, pale brown almost invisible wader which might be so tame you could walk within yards before it flies away. Their name anciently was ‘dote’, meaning foolish; a gullible fool one could easily catch and kill. They also have a strange sex life. On the Scottish Highlands in spring, the female lays the eggs and then flies off to Norway and finds another mate, leaving her Scottish husband to hatch her first batch and look after the young. Dotterels once nested in the Lake District but fly-fishermen convinced themselves that the bird’s feathers exerted a magical charm over the trout and the dotterel was priced out of existence.