ON a recent visit to the Yorkshire coast we passed, between Bempton and Filey, the Dotterel Inn with a depiction of a dotterel, one of Britain’s rarest and most iconic breeding birds, on its signboard.

When I had first seen the pub, many years ago, I had been charmed to think it was named after this wading bird which only breeds on the tundra on top of Scotland’s highest peaks. I presumed the inn name had originated from sightings of the bird along its east coast migration route.

The truth is far more sobering. Perhaps because of its isolated breeding grounds, this beautiful bird is trusting of approach by humans and, from the Middle Ages through to the last century, had been seen as easy prey for hunters, valued for its meat and feathers.

Hunters came from across the country in search of the birds which, although they could fly, like the dodo and the great auk were regarded as foolish. Their name, coming from the Middle English “dote”, implies stupidity.

They were shot in such numbers as sometimes to be pickled in barrels. The inn’s name actually commemorates this barbaric practice.

I found my first dotterels in May 1982, in a ploughed field near Ravenscar, a little further up the coast, five of them en route to the Scottish highlands.

I saw them again a year later on a Cairngorm plateau at an altitude of about 4000 feet with low grey rocks embedded in gravel and low clumps of grass in moss, real tundra vegetation.

While following ptarmigan which preferred to run rather than fly I suddenly found a close group of a dozen dotterel running away in front of me, very tame. At least six were juveniles with less bright plumage – a magic moment.

It took 36 years before I encountered dotterels again, on a trip to Finland three years ago. Two pairs were in open tundra, an environment rather similar to the top of the Cairngorms but here, well above the Arctic Circle, at a much lower altitude of only 1400 feet.

The future of these delightful plovers in Britain is in doubt, for as temperatures rise with global heating, the vegetation and invertebrate life of their mountain plateau habitat is changing. Research also shows that the vegetation, adapted to sparse soils with few nutrients, is being overfertilised by the deposition of nitrogen oxides from the ever increasing motor traffic in the valleys far below.

wharfedale-nats.org.uk