THE SMALLER INLAND BIRDS. 



WREN. Plentiful everywhere. 



PIED WAGTAIL. Common, and I have several times found its nest in 

 Formby. 



YELLOW WAGTAIL. Fairly numerous. 



MEADOW PIPIT. Commonly known as the sky-lark. Hundreds of dozens 

 of these beautiful little songsters are snared every 

 winter, when the snow is on the ground, in the 

 " panties." A long narrow strip of land about two 

 hundred yards long and a foot wide is completely 

 cleared of snow, and down this strip is stretched a 

 long thin cord, from which dozens of treacherous 

 horse-hair nooses are arranged. The birds will make 

 to this open strip in thousands, especially if a few 

 handfuls of grain are placed under the panties. All 

 kinds of small birds are captured.* 



RICHARD'S PIPIT. Byerly states that the Rev. T. Staniforth, of Skipton, 

 has a specimen which was shot at Crosby. 



ROCK PIPIT. Is mentioned in several works on Natural History as 

 occurring frequently near Liverpool. 



SPOTTED Common. 



FLYCATCHER. 



SWALLOW. No one interested in birds could fail to take an 

 interest in the exquisitely graceful appearance and 



SKY-LARK. Jack Aindow and the writer were sitting in a. small gunning punt in _ the Formby 

 Channel, on January zsrd, 1890, about ten a.m., when a regular flight of meadow pipits came past 

 us. We were lying, made fast to a net stake, and the poor little birds came flitting along about a 

 yard off the water in flocks of fifty or n hundred. We lay there half-an-hour and they were passing 

 us all the time. Jack Aindow called them mountain larks, as they were of a very much darker 

 colour than the ordinary meadow pipit. The weather was bitterly cold and frosty, and the birds were 

 Hying South-West. 



