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Updated: May 21, 2025
A few wagtails, however, tarry in the hills till quite late in the season. This species, notwithstanding its name, has bright yellow lower plumage. It nests in Kashmir. Allied to the wagtails are the pipits. These display the elegant form of the wagtail and the sober colouring of the lark. They affect open country and feed on the ground.
Lap-longspur, Snowbird, Shorelarks, and Pipits are here soaring and singing, or among the barren rocks are Ptarmigan in garments that are painted in the patterns of their rocks. There is one sombre fowl of ampler wing that knows no line is at home in the open or in the woods.
The Bock Pipit is included in Professor Ansted's list, but marked as only occurring in Guernsey. All the Rock Pipits I have seen in the Channel Islands have been the common form, Anthus obscurus; I have never seen one of the rufous-breasted examples which occur in Scandinavia and the Baltic, and have by some been separated as a distinct species under the name of Anthus rupestris.
The Meadow Pipit is resident and breeds in all the Islands, but is by no means so numerous as the Tree Pipit is during the summer. I think, however, its numbers are slightly increased in the autumn, about the time of the departure of the Tree Pipits, by migrants. It is included by Professor Ansted in his list, but marked as occurring only in Guernsey. ROCK PIPIT. Anthus obscurus, Latham.
I should think, however, Tree and Meadow Pipits, Skylarks and Stonechats, from their numbers and the numbers of their nests, must be the foster-parents most usually selected; other favourites, such as Wagtails, Hedgesparrows, and Robins, being comparatively scarce in that part of the Island, and Wheaters, which were numerous, had their nests too far under large stones to give the Cuckoo an opportunity of depositing her eggs there.
The sheltering forests have mostly been swept away, and safe shelters for small birds are very rare. In the open, there are owls and hawks; and the only refuge from either is the thick-leafed grove, into which linnets and pipits can dive at the approach of danger and quickly hide. A linnet from the North after days of dangerous travel finally reached Lake Como, southward bound.
When first discovered it contained two pipit's eggs and the egg of a cuckoo. "At the next visit, after an interval of forty-eight hours," writes Mrs. Blackburn, "we found the young cuckoo alone in the nest, and both the young pipits lying down the bank, about ten inches from the margin of the nest, but quite lively after being warmed in the hand.
There were a great many Stonechats in the Vale when I was there this year . Generally they seemed earlier in their breeding proceedings than either Wheatears, Tree Pipits, or Sky Larks, which were the three other most numerous birds about that part of the Island, as there were several young ones about when we first went to live in the Vale early in June; still occasionally nests with eggs more or less hard sat might be found, but the greater number were hatched when fresh eggs of Tree Pipits and Sky Larks were by no means uncommon.
More abundant were the small birds in mixed flocks or hordes finches, buntings, and larks in thousands on thousands, with a sprinkling of pipits and pied and grey wagtails, all busily feeding on the stubble and fresh ploughed land.
The bailiwicks of the pipits and the rosy finches slightly overlapped, as did also those of the pipits and the white-crowned sparrows near the great mountain's base. However, no pipits ventured to the upper story of this elevated region at least, not at the time of our visit, although they may have ascended to the summit later in the season. How blithe and cheerful were the pretty leucostictes!
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