ii To the Engstlen Alp once more 3 5 



upon this nest, on a steep bit of grassy ground, con- 

 taining five eggs speckled with greenish brown. This 

 bird is perhaps the handsomest of all the Pipits, and 

 as he has been found some four or five times in 

 England, he is a bird worth knowing, even if you 

 cannot follow him to his native haunts. He has a 

 distinct light stripe over the eye ; his upper parts 

 are gray, with a slight bluish tinge ; his throat and 

 breast are rufous, his belly white, and his legs black, 

 or nearly so. The wing coverts are brown, and these 

 and the secondaries have whitish edges which show 

 in two bars on the folded wing ; and the outer 

 feathers of the tail have the white which is charac- 

 teristic of almost all the Pipits and Wagtails. 1 



The Black Eedstart is here, as everywhere else in 

 Switzerland, at all heights up to the snow. I found 

 a nest here, on a beam beneath the roof of a hay- 

 barn a large, ungainly structure, as all nests are apt 

 to be when built in such positions. Another nest, 

 which was evidently in a hole in some big boulder, 

 I utterly failed to find, in spite of careful watching ; 

 the old cock bird was far too wary for me. I call 

 him old because he had a head and nape so very 

 gray that in some lights it seemed almost white ; and 



1 This description, which tallies well enough with that of Mr. 

 H. Saunclers in his Manual of British Birds (where this bird is 

 called the Water Pipit), is taken from notes made in 1885 of a bird 

 which Anderegg shot on this alp. 



