42 BULLETIN 197, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



upland moors. In many parts of the British Isles and Continental 

 Europe there are large tracts of country where the meadow pipit 

 is not only the dominant small bird but almost the only one to be met 

 with at all commonly. As one walks over the moors one may often 

 traverse large areas that are saved from almost complete birdlessness 

 only by the meadow pipits, which from time to time rise ahead of one 

 with their shrill alarm notes, fly a little way with a flitting, jerky 

 action, and drop to the ground again. From about April to June these 

 same moors are enlivened by the dancing forms of the male birds in the 

 air, as each flutters up with his tinkling, feeble, yet cheery little song, 

 which is completed as he glides to the ground again with wings some- 

 what raised and tail spread. 



On the heathy barrens of the high north of Europe beyond the tree 

 limit, the meadow pipit is just as prominent a member of the bird 

 population as on the moors of Great Britain, and it is common, too, 

 in Iceland, whence came, no doubt, the birds that have reached the 

 American Continent. In Iceland, writes Hantzsch (1905), it is 

 characteristic of the hilly grasslands, upland moors, and heathy tracts, 

 and in the mountains ascends as high as it can find a continuous ground 

 vegetation. The bleak lands of the far north are deserted in winter, 

 and even from temperate regions like the British Isles many emigrate, 

 though many remain. The high ground is, however, mostly deserted, 

 and the species becomes common in the lowlands in places where it 

 does not breed. In the more southern parts of its breeding range it is 

 met with chiefly on grasslands in the mountains. 



Courtshi'p. — The meadow pipit is one of those small passerines 

 that seem to have no very well defined or regular pattern of display. 

 Miss S. M. Butlin (1940) has recorded the behavior of a male which 

 ran four or possibly five times in front of the female "with stiflF, very 

 upright gait, wings slightly away from body and head held rigid 

 and rather bowed while he sang quietly." The female was crouching 

 in the solicitation posture, but the male finished the performance by 

 flying off to a heather clump a few yards away, and coition did not 

 take place although the birds were not disturbed. Miss A. Morley 

 (1940) has witnessed a type of display which has not been recorded by 

 any other observer. She describes how a male which had been moving 

 round the female with slightly drooped wings and cocked-up tail 

 "picked up a large piece of flowering grass and flew with it in his bill 

 for a short way low over the grasses, with a rather slow flight and 

 rapid quivering wings," and this behavior was twice repeated. Droop- 

 ing of the wings by the male, a common action in sexually excited birds, 

 has also been noted by Caroline and Desmond Nethersolc-Thompson 

 (1940) , who add that by a dipping action he displays the white beneath 

 the tail. These observers also find that "courtship feeding" of the 

 female by the male is regularly practiced during incubation either on 



