MEADOW PIPIT. 429 
grass generally : it is constructed externally of dried bents, 
lined with finer bents, and some hairs: the eggs are from 
four to six in number, of a reddish brown colour, mottled 
over with darker brown; the length of the egg nine lines 
by seven lines in breadth. The parent bird has been ob- 
served to feign being wounded for the purpose of with- 
drawing attention from its nest. W. Thompson, Esq. in 
his valuable communications on the Natural History of 
Ireland,* mentions that ‘his friend at Cromac has fre- 
quently found the nest of the Meadow Pipit on the banks 
of water-courses and drains, as well as on the ground in 
fields. One which was known to him at the side of a 
drain was discovered by some _ bird-nesting boys, who 
pulled the grass away that concealed it. On visiting it 
the next day, he observed a quantity of withered grass 
laid regularly across the nest ; on removing this,—which, 
from its contrast in colour with the surrounding herbage, 
he considered must have been placed there as a mark by 
the boys,—the bird flew off the nest ; and on his return- 
ing the following day, he found the grass similarly placed, 
and perceived a small aperture beneath it by which the 
bird took its departure, thus indicating that the screen, 
which harmonised so, ill with the surrounding verdure, had 
been brought there by the bird itself. The same gentle- 
man once introduced the egg of a Hedge Accentor into a 
Meadow Pipit’s nest, containing two of its own eggs ; but 
after a third egg was laid, the nest was abandoned.” The 
desertion of the nest was probably induced by the visits 
of the observer, rather than by the introduction of the 
strange egg, as the egg of the Cuckoo is more frequently 
deposited and hatched in the nest of the Meadow Pipit 
than in that of any other bird. 
* Magazine of Zoology and Botany, and Annals of Natural History. 
