ANTHUS. 2 11 



irregularity on the ground before you can get within shooting 

 distance of them, and by the time you have bagged three or four 

 you are completely done up, notwithstanding the thermometer 

 registers only 50. Once flushed, they become doubly wild, and 

 at the first approach of danger rise perpendicularly almost out 

 of sight, with a series of jerky flights, at times poising themselves 

 in mid-air, very much after the fashion of the Sky-Lark. 



" In its nidification it resembles Anthus arboreus. The nest, as 

 I have already_mentioned, is constructed of dry grass-blades, and 

 it is well co"T iled under a tussock of overhanging grass. The 

 eggs, however, are very different from those of the sister species, 

 and resemble very dark varieties of Anthus pratensw ; in short, they 

 are very like Hewitson's second figure of the Meadow -Pi pit's egg, 

 a variety which that author says is seldom met with. 



" Although I explored many miles of good ground where these 

 birds were plentiful, I procured only three nests ; the conclusion 

 to be arrived at is that the majority of them are late breeders, say 

 from the latter end of June to July. 



"Mr. Brooks, who has been so good as to examine my series of 

 this bird, pronounces them, one and all, to belong to the typical 

 Anthus maculatus. The chief specific characters of this species, as 

 has now so frequently been referred to, consist in the narrow ill- 

 defined striations on the back, which is an olive-green colour, and 

 in having the posterior half of the supercilium pure white. I 

 never once came across Anthus arboreus, which would appear 

 to summer much further north, probably from Thibet to Yar- 

 kand." 



Anthus nilgblriensis, Sharpe. The Nilyhiri Pipit. 



Pipastes montanus (Jerd.), Jerd. B. 2nd. ii, p. 230 ; Hume, Rouyh 

 Draft N. $ E. no. 598. 



Mr. Davison brought me a skin, nest, and four eggs of the 

 Nilghiri Pipit from the Mlghiris, and informs me that they were 

 obtained in May at Neddivattam, at an elevation of about 6500 

 feet ; the nest is a shallow cup of grass loosely put together and 

 lined with finer grass. He snared the bird on the nest. He 

 remarks : 



" This bird breeds at Ootacamund and its immediate vicinity, and 

 also down the slopes to about 6000 feet. The nest is placed under 

 a tuft of grass, or bush, on the side of a hill, and is composed of 

 dry grass lined with finer grass. The eggs, two or three in num- 

 ber, are pale dingy greenish brown, thickly mottled with a darker 

 shade. The bird breeds in April and May." 



The eggs vary in shape from rather broad to moderately elon- 

 gated ovals, and one of them is a good deal compressed and some- 

 what pointed towards the small end; they are dull-looking eggs, 

 with scarcely any gloss. The ground-colour, of which by the way 

 the markings leave little visible, varies in every egg : in the four 

 before me it is pinkish-, greenish-, greyish-, and creamy- white, and 



