70 Mr. H. M. Wallis on the Birds 



mountaiu bird, as far up the Gave-cle-Pau as St; Sauveur, 

 say 25.25 feet. 



31. MOTACILLA MELANOFE, Pall. 



The Grey Wagtail is the bird of the mountains, and I find 

 "ubique" marked against this species on my list. It is par- 

 ticularly fond of waterfalls and narrow inaccessible glens and 

 '* races." A pair had a nest over the fall at the back of my 

 hotel at St. Sauveur ; the visits of the male began and ended 

 only with daylight ; he would send his call-note before him 

 as he came undulating over the house-tops, and was so full 

 of energy that once in a dozen journeys he must needs 

 recreate himself with dancing a kind of aerial " breakdown,'' 

 towering vertically in successive leaps with abundant action 

 of the tail, singing the while with considerable execution. 



32. Anthus trivialis, Linn. 



A single Tree-Pipit was singing in a tree beside the road 

 between Larruns and Eaux-Bonnes on May 26th, but we saw 

 this species nowhere else. The Meadow-Pipit escaped me 

 altogether. 



33. Anthus spipoletta, Linn. 



The Water-Pipit is the common Pipit of these mountains, 

 and one hears and sees it everywhere upon the bare grassy 

 uplands beyond the forest-line. I have watched pairs run- 

 ning upon the snow far from any herbage. On June 14th 

 and 16tli eggs were found, much incubated, above Gavarnie, 

 at an elevation of not less than 6000 feet, and a third on 

 June 21st on a southern spur of the Pic du Midi de Bigorre, 

 at about the same elevation. These nests, placed, like those 

 of a Meadow-Pipit, in a hollow beneath a tussock of grass 

 overhanging a path or watercourse, were eutered by small 

 mousehole-like apertures, the outer Avail of the nest being 

 formed of coarse grasses, of which the knotted roots, with 

 pellets of earth adhering, were cunningly left exposed. 

 These nests would be impossible to find if the parent birds 

 would sit close. My eggs vary in size and colouring within 

 much the same limits as those of the Rock-Pipit from Donegal, 

 but have a stronger ink-mark. I could not tell them from 



