PA&SERES. 



WATER-PIPIT. 581 



MOTACILLIDjE. 



Anthus spipoletta (Linnaeus*). 



THE WATEE-PIPIT. 



Steangely confounded by many writers with the Rock- 

 Pipit, next to be described, though differing from it in cha- 

 racters of plumage, which will be immediately pointed out, 

 and still more in its ordinary haunts, is a bird that has been 

 long nominally known to naturalists and has somewhat inap- 

 propriately received the English name of Water-Pipit. This 

 species is found in most parts of Europe, and having been 

 taken in this country at least three times, its introduction 

 to the present work seems necessary. Its first undoubted 

 occurrence in England f was recorded in 1864 by Mr, John 



* Alatala spinoletta {mh\>T\nt), Linnaeus, Syst. Nat. Ed. 12, i. p. 288 (1766). 



+ In October 1843 Mr. Thomas Webster, of Manchester, observed at Fleetwood 



three examples of a Pipit which, from reading a diagnosis of Anthus aquations, 



