Anglesey 



to the edge of the cliff, larks and meadow-pipits 

 were flitting about on one hand, whilst, on the other, 

 a rock-pipit had slung its nest in the loops of roots 

 projecting from the face of the gravelly cliff. Thus, 

 within sight and sound of each, one might observe at 

 once the pipit of the land and the pipit of the shore. 

 Below, on the shingle, their sprightlier kinsman, 

 the pied wagtail, betrayed his kinship with these 

 dun-coloured, but much more widely distributed, 

 pipits, by a similar dipping flight, the same walking 

 gait, the same flirting motion of the tail. With its 

 slimmer build, more brilliant markings, and elongated 

 tail, the wagtail combines characteristics which are 

 but exaggerations of those of its homelier cousins. 

 Both walk, but the wagtail struts ; both wag their 

 tails, but the wagtail has more to wag, and wags it 

 oftener. He and his immediate and elegant relatives, 

 the yellow and the grey wagtails, are the patricians 

 of the household of the pipits. They have risen in 

 the world, donned fine clothes, and assumed a lordly 

 air. But they have forgotten how to sing. Such 

 song as they have is a low, prattling warble, inaudible 

 a few yards from the bird emitting it. It was not an 

 extravagant compliment to the sweet songs of the 

 pipits when earlier ornithologists bracketed them as 

 the immediate kinsmen of the skylark ; and if later 

 classification has placed them with the wagtails, they 

 have the satisfaction of more nearly appreciating 

 that, if fine feathers make fine birds, as a rule they 

 make poor songsters. 



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