TAWNY PIPIT. 595 



keeps to the ground. Its call-note is harsh and frequently 

 uttered, recalling at times, it is said, that of the Short- toed 

 Lark : its song is monotonous and consists of sharp notes 

 delivered on the wing. 



The Tawny Pipit places its nest in tufts of grass, at the 

 foot of a shrub and sometimes among heather or even in 

 corn-fields, sheltered by a clod of earth, or in a dried-up 

 watercourse beside a stone. According to Mr. Salvin, who 

 had ample means of observing this bird in Algeria, its nest 

 is composed of roots with a lining of horsehair, and is gene- 

 rally placed on the lee-side of a bush, the prevailing wind 

 there being from the north-west. The eggs are five or six 

 in number, measuring from -91 to -78 by from -64 to '59 in., 

 and are subject to a good deal of variation in colour, being of 

 a french-white boldly and rather sparsely blotched, speckled 

 or mottled with brown of several shades and dull lilac, or of 

 a yellowish-white dappled and streaked with bright purplish- 

 brown. Some specimens are strangely like those of the 

 Rufous Warbler already described (page 358), but they are 

 generally more decidedly marked. In Germany this Pipit 

 is said to have but one nest in the season and that towards 

 the end of May. Its food is believed to consist entirely of 

 small insects, chiefly belonging to the Orders Coleoptera 

 and Neuroptera, which it catches as it runs, and it is said 

 never to eat seeds when at large. It is curious, when the 

 arid nature of the bird's haunts are considered, to learn that 

 it does not cleanse its plumage as Larks do by dusting itself, 

 but invariably bathes in water. 



The bill is dark brown at the base of the upper mandible, 

 becoming lighter towards the tip, and the lower mandible is 

 pale yellow-brown : the irides dark brown : a light buff stripe 

 passes over the eyes and ear-coverts which last are brown ; 

 the top of the head and upper parts generally are dull 

 greyish-brown, each feather darkest along the shaft and more 

 or less broadly edged with light tawny, the outer webs of the 

 primaries and secondaries with narrow and greyer edges ; 

 the outer pair of tail-feathers dull tawny-white, with an 

 elongated, dark patch extending from the base nearly the 



