206 BRITISH BIRDS' NESTS. 



Yorkshire Avliere pairs return to nest year after year 

 witli the utmost regularity ; the cocks using the 

 same tree, often the very same branch, to start 

 from and return to after their short singing flight. 

 Near woods, plantations, and tree-fringed streams. 

 Affects more cultivated districts than the Meadow 

 Pipit. Scattered over England in suitable districts, 

 rare in the west and Wales, more numerous in 

 the south of Scotland, rare in the north, and not 

 reported in Ireland, on reliable authority. Our 

 illustration was procured in North Yorkshire. 



Matericds. — Dry grass, moss, roots, lined with 

 finer grass and generally, though not always, 

 horsehair. 



Eggs. — Four to five, sometimes six ; exceedingly 

 variable in coloration. Professor Newton regards 

 those of "a frencli- white, so closely mottled or 

 speckled with deep brown as almost to hide the 

 ground colour," as the normal type ; whilst Morris 

 regards those " greyish-white in ground-colour, witli 

 a faint tinge of j^urple, clouded and spotted with 

 purple-brown or purple-red," as the most general, 

 and amongst the nests I have found this type has 

 certainly been the most numerous. In another 

 type the ground colour is yellowish-white, and the 

 spots rich reddish-brown. Some eggs are of a 

 uniform brownish -pink, rarely marked on the larger 

 end with hair-lines of dark brown or black. The 

 spots not only vary much in colour but in size 

 and distribution. Size about -83 by '63 in. The 

 larger size of the eggs, their inclination to reddish- 

 brown, and locality of nest, help to distinguish them. 



Time. — May and June. 



Bemarlxs. — Migratory, arriving in April and 

 departing in September or October. Notes, a sweet, 

 ringing tsee, tsee, Uce^ uttered pretty quickly. 



