2:U HlilTISM BIHDS. [vol. ix. 



Middlesex. It is the delivery tl).at is so channing. 

 The bird rises to a height of some forty feet, never to 

 the lark-like heights of Anthus cervinus. As he ascends, 

 the song is broken and laboured, and then, as if the effort 

 was too great, he seems to give it up and parachute 

 earthwards in a sort of transport of relief at rest after 

 hard labour. When scores of birds are thus rising and 

 falling over the A\'illows on some sunny morning while 

 the snowdrifts are melting all over the tundra, the 

 effect is very beautiful ; and it is not difficult to under- 

 stand hoAv these gay throaty out])ourings of the Lapp 

 Bimting have earned more than their share of praise. 



On the Yenesei the season of song is very short, for 

 the cock becomes mute soon after incubation has begun. 

 In this he is unlike the Red-throated Pipit. A\hich sings 

 on well into July after the young are hatched. 



While on the subject of song I may briefly speak of 

 the other notes of this species that have come under 

 my notice in the breeding-season. Wlien the nest is 

 approached, the alai-m note is a long melancholy A\hine — 

 Wheee-ee. The birds begin to fret Avhen you are a 

 hundred yards away, and all day the tundra rings ^ith 

 their protests in maddening monotony. There is some- 

 thing oddly ventriloquial in this sound, and I have 

 sometimes looked for a Golden Plover on the horizon, 

 only to find that the note was not softened by distance 

 as I had supposed, but came from a Bunting at my feet. 

 After the breeding-season, adults A\hen disturbed rose 

 A\ith a sharp " Zip," sometlnng like a Liimet. only more 

 shrill. The young before migration banded together in 

 flocks, and had then a call or alarm note that resembled 

 the chirruping of a House-Sparrow . 



The Ijapland Bunting Avas a most NNidely-ditVu^cd 

 species at (iolcliika, and was found in every environment, 

 from the wettest to the driest. Domu in the marshes the 

 l»irds generally nested inider the logs oi' driftwood ; out 

 on the tundra they bred under peat tussocks, or else 

 beneath llic dwarf biccli scrub. Tlic inciibat iuir bird 



