Bird-Life m Labrador. "21 



an and down its head, lowers its tail, then elevates somewhat 

 ithe center of the back, and either remains perfectly still or 

 creeps away as it seems to -decide from the apparent danger of 

 the situation, I have seen it remain still in this position the 

 better part of half an hour, and until I was thoroughly tired 

 waiting. If I moved the bird would then fly off with a wild, 

 irregular, low but slowly-rising flight, tipping from side to 

 side as do many of the sandpipers. When the flight is for a 

 short distance only it seems to be rather undulating, I have 

 often seen an old bird rise in a series of irregular spirals to quite 

 a height, when it would seems to flutter or sustain itself by a 

 series of trembling fl utterings, only to soon dart off to the right 

 or to the left and descend as if to alight, but, instead of so doing, 

 to continue its flutterings and presently dart off in some new 

 direction. Conceiving, at first, that this might be owing to 

 some bewilderment, I arose from thecrouching position that I 

 had assumed upon first flushing the bird. All the time I was 

 standing the bird continued these wild, irregular movements; 

 almost ttie moment I again crouched the bird descended and 

 alighted. I tried the same experiment repeatedly, with the 

 same results. The longer I remain standing the more irregular 

 were the bird's movements in the air directly after being flushed, 

 while if I crouched at the instant of flushing, it immediately 

 alighted at a short distance from its former position. While 

 performing these gyrations the pipit seldom utters any note, 

 excepting occasionally a sound which approaches more nearly 

 to an attempt to whistle, in a medium but not too shrill key, 

 the word weep, or weep-weep ; this is repeated once, twice, or 

 even three times in rather slow succession. The same note is 

 uttered as the bird flies about from place to place, but generally, 

 so far as my observation goes, it picks up its food in silence* 

 The young men and boys generally, along the coast, recognized 

 the bird when I showed it them, and said that "it builds its nest 

 in some low tree, against the trunk or some large, stout limb ; 

 it is made of mud, plastered with grasses much like that of a 

 robin's," and that the eggs are " smaller than any other egg we 



