Armitt : The Birds of Rydal. 243 



Yellow Wagtail. Motacilla campestris Gray. Summer 

 visitant. I found the bird on 6th May 1898, on the spot where 

 I had always looked for it — the bit of flat about the river and 

 D tinny Beck, where they flow into the lake. The site, 

 however, is closely hemmed in and commanded by the noisy 

 highway, and it did not stay. It is there again this year, 

 I am glad to say. Mr. Macpherson, in the 1 Fauna of Lake- 

 land,' conveys the impression that this bird is rare with 

 us. It may be well, therefore, to note its stations hereabouts. 

 All are of the same character : a flat alluvial meadow, situated 

 at the junction of an affluent of some size with a lake. By the 

 Troutbeck and by Burdhouse mouth, on Windermere ; by the 

 Rothay, on Grasmere ; by Black Beck, on Esthwaite. The two 

 stations I am best acquainted with are occupied year after year, 

 and where the space is considerable -by several pairs. 



Tree Pipit. Anthus trivialis (L.). Summer visitant. 

 Abundant wherever there are trees, even in the scanty fringe 

 of those along the Rydal Beck, in the basin under Fairfield, 

 600 feet hig-h ; and so crow T ded is it on the limit of its range 

 that while one bird may be seen in possession of the very last 

 singing- post (an old dwarf Ash) another beyond starts and 

 concludes its aerial course of song from a wall-top or bank. It 

 is also in the Junipers of Loughrigg. First singers heard from 

 the 1 6th to 25th April. A beautiful though variable singer. 

 Seems to sing best and most on the wing, in cold, wet seasons, 

 while in heat and drought it keeps more to the boughs and 

 sings in shorter strains. Nests generally in dry grass slopes, 

 close to trees or wood. Possibly a second nester sometimes. 

 Last seen 20th August. 



Meadow Pipit. Anthus pratensis (L.). Summer visitant. 

 This bird leaves us as regularly as the preceding species, though 

 its method of autumnal roaming and its very occasional re- 

 appearance in a mild winter evidence a more partial migration. 

 It comes, like the Pied Wagtail, in March, and often as a small 

 band, but does not settle to its higher breeding-ground till quite 

 a month later. It appears to have two characters of nesting 

 habitat : one in the valley, upon a marsh or watery meadow ; 

 the other upon the high, bleak, and grassy slope of the 

 mountains, where, however, a stream flows near. In the 

 latter station it sings more freely than in the former. There 

 is a colony of these birds in Rydal Head ; and their range, bare 

 and treeless, touches, almost overlaps, that of the Tree Pipits', 

 which ascends to the highest bush of the vale ; so that the two 



1902 August 1. 



