212 WAGTAILS AND PIPITS 



wag their tails, as well as yet not as well as the wagtails, who wag 

 theirs much better by which I mean much more, and more often. 

 It is a low wag, as compared to a high one, a sedate and measured 

 wag, as compared to a fast one, and a wag that is occasional, merely, 

 as compared to one which never leaves off. I know not how it may 

 strike others, but to me this appears to be the great psychical 

 distinction between the two sub-families. It is L 1 Allegro and II 

 Penseroso, and if literary critics have never yet suggested that the 

 contemplation, by their author, of this difference, gave rise to those 

 two peerless poems, it is not, in my opinion, because they have not 

 been absurd enough, but only because they have not been sufficiently 

 ornithological, also. 



Unlike the last-mentioned species, tree-pipits, on the approach 

 of autumn, band themselves into small companies of from twelve to 

 fifteen, and pass thus, by easy stages, southwards, through Europe, 

 into East Africa, where they winter. The love of woods and trees 

 has now left them, and during the whole long journey such at least 

 is the opinion of Liebe they pass the nights in fields or the open 

 country, generally, roosting either on the ground or amidst low 

 herbage. Their flight is now changed from the usual somewhat (in 

 appearance) laborious one, in which the bird seems to make long 

 fluttering leaps through the air as if trying to hop there, to use 

 Liebe's similitude to a series of shorter and steadier efforts, each 

 one representing a little arch or curve. 1 These habits appear to have 

 received little attention in England, or, at any rate, in English works 

 of ornithology, a bare mention of the birds " congregating into small 

 flocks" after the nesting season, and an involved passage where 

 " little parties " are spoken of, being all that I have been able to find. 

 Liebe's interesting account, I may say, begins at the very beginning, 

 and is too detailed for space to allow me to do it justice. With the 

 rock-pipit things are still worse. Montagu 2 long ago " observed them, 



1 OrnitJiologische Schriften, quoted in Naumann. 



2 A Dictionary of British Birds. 



