500 PASSERIFORMES CHAP. 
parts and greyish or black heads, or almost entirely yellowish. 
Most Pipits are brown above, with dark streaks, and light edges 
to the feathers, and are buff, whitish, or rufous below, with tri- 
angular brown spots. The outer rectrices are usually more or less 
white, as are sometimes part of the others. Limonidromus, how- 
ever, is an olive-brown Wagtail with two black crescentic marks 
below, Anthus chloris a Pipit with a yellow patch on the breast. 
A. rosaceus has yellow axillaries; A. tenellus, has the wings, tail, 
cheeks, and under surface chiefly yellow, with a black pectoral 
band. The curious genus Mucronyx, to its mainly brown colora- 
tion adds orange, yellow, or pink lower parts with a black gorget, 
while it shews a marvellous resemblance in other respects to Stwr- 
nella (p. 580)—M. crocea to S. magna, M. ameliae to S. defilippir. 
The bill and feet are usually black in Wagtails; the former is 
brown, with paler mandible and yellowish gape in Pipits, where 
the feet are brown, yellowish, or reddish. The females are duller, 
and in the Motacillinae the young are usually browner. 
Waetails frequent streams and stagnant waters, as in the case of 
the Pied, White, and Grey Wagtails, Motacilla lugubris, M. alba, 
and JL melanope; or they haunt fields of corn and meadows, as 
in the Blue-headed and Yellow Wagtails, IZ flava and M. ravi. 
All the above breed in Britain, but the White and Blue-headed 
species rarely. The Grey and the Yellow Wagtails both have yellow 
breasts, but the former -has a grey, the latter an olive, back. 
Pipits prefer open places with rough herbage, as for instance 
the Meadow-Pipit, Anthus pratensis ; rocky shores, as the Rock- 
Pipit, A. obscurus; or open parts of woods and banks, as the 
Tree-Pipit, A. trivialis. These nest commonly with us, while the 
Red-throated Pipit, A. cervinus, the Tawny Pipit, A. campestris, 
Richard’s Pipit, A. richardi, and the Water-Pipit, A. spipoletta, 
visit us occasionally. Flocks are rarely seen, but a few individuals 
often congregate on the sea-beaches in winter; the flight is easy, 
though jerky, and not protracted; that of Wagtails being distinctly 
undulating. Neocorys soars ike a Sky-Lark, and the Tree-Pipit in ~ 
particular hovers above his perch while singing. The songs of the 
last-named, and of Motacilla vidua are more Finch-like ; that of 
Neocorys Lark-like ; those of other species shrill, and less frequent 
than their repeated call- or alarm-note of chit-chit (Pipits) or 
chis-sic (Wagtails). The food consists of seeds, insects, worms, 
small molluses and crustaceans, usually procured upon the ground, 
