28 Mr. Heury Scebohm on the 



relatives, is allowed by courtesy to set up a j^euus distinct 

 from the Chats) acts precisely in the manner described, and 

 as it frequents the same locality, it is not unlikely that the 

 habits of a female Black Redstart have been transferred to 

 the Alpine Accentor. The flight of the latter bird is per- 

 formed with very pronounced and very short undulations. 

 A week afterwards I had an opportunity of watching a pair 

 of Alpine Accentors searching for food on the rocks. They 

 creep about among the stones, and almost in the same way 

 that the Hedge-Sparrow shuffles along amongst the roots 

 and the tree-trunks. When they alighted on a rock they 

 did so with expanded wings and outspread tail, sometimes 

 approaching the ground in a curve, in both particulars 

 resembling a Starling, The note was occasionally uttered 

 on the wing. 



The Pipit was extremely common on the pastures, and 

 still more so on the meadows after the hay had been 

 removed. Some of the young seemed to be only recently 

 fledged, and their parents were still very anxious about them. 

 We devoted nearly an hour to one pair of birds, as their 

 actions appeared to signify that the young had not yet left 

 the nest. The hen bird had caught a moth, which she was 

 anxious to convey to her children, and stood with it in her 

 beak, afraid to reveal the whereabouts of her nest. For a 

 long time she remained perched on a rock, then occupied 

 alternately the summits of two small larches, then returned 

 again to the rock, and occasionally flew up to within a few 

 yards of where we were sitting, and hovered near us to ex- 

 amine us more minutely. All this time she kept up, in spite 

 of the moth in her beak, her monotonous alarm-note, sii, 

 sit, sit, sometimes stopping to call to her mate, who did not 

 venture so near us, with a soft ist, ist. She may, after all, 

 not have had a nest : at any rate she tired us out, and we gave 

 up the quest. 



The Black Redstarts were also very demonstrative, many 

 of them having still scarcely fledged young. Their alarm- 

 note of tek, tek, tek was very often heard, and not unfre- 

 quently their call-note, tzi, tzi, tzi. One of these birds had 



