48 BULLETIN 197, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



tember (Hantzsch). Earliest dates in Rome district of Italy, October 

 4 (Alexander), Naples district, October 5 (B. W. T.), Egypt, end of 

 October, but once September 29 (Meinertzhagen). 

 Casual records. — Madeira, Canaries. 



ANTHUS CERVINUS (Pallaa) 



RED-THROATED PIPIT 



Contributed by Bebnabd William Tucker 



HABITS 



The red-throated pipit is a mainly Siberian species that has occurred 

 accidentally on the west side of the American Continent. The earli- 

 est authority for its occurrence quoted b}'^ the authors of the A. O. U. 

 Check-list, namely Zander (1854) in the Journal flir Ornithologie 

 for 1853, says no more than that its range extends through Asia as 

 far as the islands near America ("bis zu den Inselin bei Amerika"), 

 and although it may be assumed that such a statement was based on 

 actual specimens no other particulars are given, nor has the present 

 writer been able to trace any. Turner (1886), however, records a 

 specimen taken at St. Michael, Western Alaska, in 1867, and Ridg- 

 way (1883) another taken at San Jose del Cabo, Lower California, on 

 January 26, 1883, a rather surprising time of j'ear. Recently Fried- 

 mann (1937) has added a third record, of a bird taken on St. Law- 

 rence Island, Alaska, in July 1936, by an Eskimo collector. 



The range of the species extends west from Siberia into northern 

 Russia and northern Scandinavia, where it overlaps with that of the 

 meadow pipit, previously described. But whereas the meadow pipit 

 is a widely distributed species in Europe, extending northward to 

 the coasts of the Arctic Ocean, the red-throated pipit is exclusively 

 an Arctic species whose range barely overlaps the northern limits of 

 the forest belt, but on the other hand extends north of Continental 

 Europe to embrace the Arctic islands of Kolgiiev, Novaya Zemlya, 

 and Waigatz, which the meadow pipit does not reach. 



In Arctic Norway, though the habitats of the two species are not 

 rigidly separated, the red-throated pipit appears on the whole to like 

 somewhat bushier and damper ground than does the meadow pipit. In 

 the south of its range it is found on high fells above the tree limit, 

 but in the north it is confined to lower levels, especially near the sea. 

 As described by Blair (1936), "swamps overgrown with dwarf birch 

 and willow and damp grassy flats are the favourite haunts of this 

 pipit," but it also, as he mentions, has a marked predeliction for cul- 

 tivation and the neighborhood of farmsteads and habitations, where 

 such are available. Thus at Vadso in Arctic Norway it is common 



