WATER-PIPIT AND ACCENTOR. 59 



the grass and fern. This blithe spirit of the flowery pastures 

 is the Water Pipit {^AntTius spinoletta, Linn.), a little grey and 

 brown bird somewhat more distinctly marked than our English 

 Pipits, having a lightish stripe over the eye, whitish-'breast, and 

 black legs ; but in other respects much like his relations, 

 both in habits and in its song, which is a long succession 

 of clear bell-like notes, slackening somewhat in rapidity and 

 force as he descends. He has very rarely been found in 

 England, but may possibly be commoner than we fancy. 

 Should I ever meet with him, he will surely carry me back 

 in fancy to his true home among the Alps, where in the 

 common speech of the peasants he is no longer a prosaic 

 Pipit, but as he may well be called, the Alpine Lark. 



Another bird which haunts this region, though not in 

 such numbers, and whose habits are much like those of the 

 Water-pipitj is the Alpine Accentor. This belongs to a 

 family (^Accentoridae) which has only one other representative 

 in Western Europe — our own familiar little Dunnock or Hedge- 

 sparrow. In plumage and song the two are not unlike, though 

 the Alpine bird is rather larger and of a more variegated 

 warm brown colouring : but I cannot help pausing for one 

 moment to point out the remarkable instance that we have 

 here of two very closely allied birds developing habits of 

 life so entirely distinct, — ^the one being stationary, the other 

 migratory; the one breeding in the road-side hedge where 

 it lives all the year, and the other retreating to the highest 

 limits of the Alpine pastures and making its nest in the holes 

 of the rocks. In the winter however the Alpine bird descends 



