40 BULLETIN 197, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Riley and Wetmore (1928) point out the distinguishing characters 

 in the plumage of the Japanese pipit as compared to the American 

 pipit. They say: "It is paler below, with heavier markings, duller, 

 less buffy above, has the wing bars more prominently white, and differs 

 in the coloration of the sides of the head." 



Austin Hobart Clark (1910), in his report of the cruise of the 

 steamer Albatross in the North Pacific Ocean, says: "I found this 

 bird common in the grassy lowlands near Milne Bay, Simushir, but 

 very shy and hard to get. The males were in full song at the time of 

 our visit, June 23." 



Nesting. — Bernard W. Tucker contributes the following note: 

 "The nesting of this race, which was originally described from winter 

 birds in Japan, was long unknown, but in recent years many eggs have 

 been obtained by the Japanese in the Kurile Islands, as noted by Yama- 

 shina (1931). In this connection Yamashina gives a reference to a 

 paper by him, 'On a Collection of Birds from Paramushiru Island, 

 North Kuriles', in the Japanese journal Tori, but as this is entirely in 

 Japanese I am unable to state what particulars about nest or eggs are 

 there given. Again, Hartert and Steinbacher (1938) state that in 

 recent years it has also been studied on its breeding grounds by Kus- 

 sian ornithologists, but I have not had access to any Russian data, and 

 the authors quoted give no references." 



DISTRIBUTION 



CONTEIBITED BY BeRN.VRD WILLIAM TUOKER 



Breeding range. — East Siberia westward at least to the Lena, Kam- 

 chatka, and the Kurile Islands. The Sakhalin bird has been distin- 

 guished as A. s. horealis Hesse, but Hartert and Steinbacher (1938) do 

 not consider this separable. 



Winter ra^i^e.— Japan, Yangtse Valley, Fohkien and Kwantung, 

 Formosa ; occasionally in Turkestan. 



ANTHUS PRATENSIS (Linnaens) 



MEADOW PIPIT 



Contributed by Bernard Whjjam Tucker 



HABITS 



The meadow pipit is a common European species breeding regularly 

 in Iceland and occurring casually, but evidently not very rarely, on 

 the ea.st coast of Greenland, where it seems certain that it breeds oc- 

 casionally, though the actual finding of a nest with eggs or young has 

 not been recorded. The earliest record from Greenland is of one re- 



