116 BIRDS OF THE WEST OF SCOTLAND. 



monotony of their weary life. Although for the most part a bird 

 of the mountain during the time of incubation, I have frequently 

 met with it in glens adorned with a profusion of birch trees and tall 

 breckans, and in the vicinity of old quarries, where its nest is often 

 artfully concealed beneath a tuft of grass. The eggs appear to be 

 subject to great variety, like those of the preceding species. There 

 is even an extraordinary difference in the birds themselves; one 

 being a short dingy bird of an unquiet and restless turn when dis- 

 turbed, the other very much brighter in colours, larger in body, and 

 silent when put off its nest. The eggs of the first are small and 

 darkly blotched; those of the second are much larger and hand- 

 somer, beautifully coloured with clear purple spots very closely 

 grained, such as distinguish some eggs of the tree pipit. When 

 the breeding season is over, and pipits flock to the pastures 

 of the low country, and into stack yards and the vicinity of 

 towns, the same difference of plumage is not so noticeable; the 

 feathers then become abraded and lose their brilliancy, which 

 does not return till the end of autumn or the following spring. 

 I have, however, been struck with the two birds when seen in 

 contrast. It is quite possible that the British pipits, especially 

 those inhabiting the western mountains of Scotland, have not 

 yet been sufficiently studied. 



THE PENNSYLVANIAN PIPIT. 



ANTHUS LUDOV1CIANUS. 



So far back as 1846 I find in my note-books records of this species 

 having been seen by myself at Dunbar in considerable numbers for 

 about ten days or a fortnight in the winter of that year. They 

 made their appearance suddenly in hard weather, and during their 

 stay on the Links near that town they frequented half frozen pools 

 on the grass, as well as the bed of a small rivulet running from 

 Broxmouth pond, which was filled with broken ice, small patches 

 of water being here and there visible. I could not at the time 

 make out the species, and knew the birds to be strangers: they 

 disappeared as suddenly as they came. A few years later I shot 

 in a garden at Dunbar at least three specimens in the spring time 

 as they silently hovered over a clump of trees, or sallied out from 

 the branches, as I thought, in quest of insects. One of these I had 



