Water Pipit. 95 



in the common speech of the peasants he is no 

 longer a prosaic Pipit, but as he may well be 

 called, the Alpine Lark. 1 



Another bird which haunts this region, though 

 not in such numbers, and whose habits are much 

 like those of the Water Pipit, is the Alpine Ac- 

 centor. This belongs to a family (Accentoridae) 

 which has only one other representative in 

 Western Europe our own familiar little Dun- 

 nock or Hedge-sparrow. In plumage and song 

 the two are not unlike, though the Alpine bird 

 is rather larger and of a more variegated warm 

 brown colouring : but I cannot help pausing for 

 one moment to point out the remarkable instance 

 that we have here of two very closely allied birds 

 developing habits of life so entirely distinct, 

 the one being stationary, the other migratory ; 

 the one breeding in the road- side hedge where 

 it lives all the year, and the other retreating to 

 the highest limits of the Alpine pastures and 

 making its nest in the holes of the rocks. In the 



1 This name (Alpenlerche) seems to be applied by the 

 peasantry both to this species and to the Alpine Accentor. 

 Mr. Seebohm, in his British Birds, calls the former, very 

 appropriately, the Alpine Pipit. 



