THE MEADOW PIPIT. 



THIS pleasing active little songster would be far more 

 appropriately named the * Moor ' Pipit, for it is amidst 

 their barren solitudes by far the greater number of them 

 delight to find a home in the summer months, only 

 being found on the lower and more cultivated lands at 

 a time when the wintry blasts howl dismally over their 

 summer haunts. 



As the observer wanders over the wildest moors, 

 where the Red Grouse skims before him, and the Ring 

 Ousel, a true bird of the wild, pipes his defiant song 

 where the Curlew and the Snipe rise in rapid flight from 

 the margins of the marshy pools, and the Lapwing reels 

 and tumbles in the air, as though cautioning the hardy 

 observer to beware how he invades her upland haunt, 

 he ofttimes hears a feeble peep-peep, and on looking round 

 sees an olive-coloured little bird sitting quietly on a 

 neighbouring rock or heather tuft, eyeing him with sus- 

 picious glances, and occasionally jerking its wings and 

 tail as though about to take flight. This is the frail 



