THE MEADOW PIPIT.
The Meadow Pipit, or Titlark as the bird is frequently called, is much more abundant than the Tree Pipit. It is rather smaller in size, duller in colour, has more and smaller spots on the breast, and when hunting for food has a habit of making little periodical rushes after insects in a more wagtail-like manner than its relative.
This species is partial to open pastures, and bent and heather-clad moorland districts, and is very abundant on the Fells in the North of England, where I can safely say I have found hundreds of nests during the course of my life. I have met with it breeding quite commonly as low down as the Norfolk Broad district and as high up as the most elevated mountain tops I have ever visited in the Highlands.
Its song is somewhat shrill, and not so musical as that of the Tree Pipit. It is uttered on the wing, the bird rising to a height of thirty or forty feet in order to deliver it; also often from a stone wall, stunted bush, or boulder.
The alarm note of this species when flushed sounds like peep, peep, and that of distress when disturbed at the nest trit, trit. Call note: zeeah, zeeah.
YOUNG MEADOW PIPIT PHOTOGRAPHED
WHILST SHELTERING BEHIND A STONE
DURING A HIGHLAND STORM.
The nest is generally built on a bank and hidden by some overhanging tuft of herbage, or amongst heather. I have, however, found two in holes amongst rough stones where a Wheatear might have been expected to breed. The structure is composed of bents, bits of fine dead grass, and horsehair, but the last-named article is frequently absent altogether.
ADULT MEADOW
PIPIT.
The eggs number from four to six, but five is a general clutch. They are greyish-white, sometimes tinged with pale bluish-green or pinkish in ground colour, mottled with varying shades of brown and occasionally marked with hair-like lines of dusky black on the larger end. They are smaller in size than those laid by the Tree Pipit.
This species is very frequently victimised by the Cuckoo, and I have often been surprised at the lonely, treeless, and semi-barren places the “Messenger of Spring” has visited in order to find a foster-mother for her offspring.
MEADOW PIPIT’S NEST AND EGGS.
Although such a common species, the Meadow Pipit is shyer at the nest than the Tree Pipit, and a satisfactory photograph is difficult to secure. On one occasion I was shown a nest containing chicks beneath a rock in the foreground of our tailpiece, and although I built a stone hiding-house for myself and the camera, it was a long time before I exposed a plate owing to the fact that the female persisted in standing on a crag at some distance and swallowing all the food her mate brought instead of carrying it to the young ones.