152 RURAL BIRD LIFE. 



a few hairs, sometimes only with fibrous roots. The 

 eggs are four or five in number, dull white in ground 

 colour, where it is seen through the markings of the 

 egg, clouded all over with brown, and sometimes spotted 

 and streaked with dark brown. They vary but little, and 

 are much smaller than those of the Tree Pipit. The 

 Meadow Pipit leaves and gains her nest by deceptive 

 motions, and upon your approach crouches low over 

 her charge and remains silent until your foot is almost 

 over her home. But it is seldom the domestic peace 

 of the Meadow Pipit is broken, or her anxiety excited 

 for her young, by the presence of man. The Cuckoo in 

 her wanderings over the wilds sometimes pays her a 

 visit and inserts her egg ; but we have yet to learn that 

 the bird selected by the Cuckoo views this intrusion 

 with displeasure. The Meadow Pipit tends her young 

 after they have left the nest, in fact the whole family 

 sometimes keep together throughout the winter. I am 

 of opinion that but one brood is reared in the year. 



The summer passes quickly away, and the hill sides 

 don their purple tints, an unfailing sign of autumn. 

 The Lapwings and Curlews as the season wanes leave 

 the bleak uplands and descend to the coasts for the 

 winter ; the Meadow Pipits, too, must retire, and they 

 appear on the pastures in September and October. 

 Here they go about solitary or in little parties. As you 

 stroll over the turnip fields and grass lands you see 

 them flying up before you, uttering their feeble and 

 complaining notes of pcep-pecp-peep, to alight a little dis- 

 tance away, and again tarry till almost trod upon ere 

 they take wing, their sober unassuming garb harmonis- 

 ing closely with surrounding tints. In the late autumn 

 months by far the greater number of Meadow Pipits 

 frequent the turnip fields, where with feeble call notes 



