The present bird has, as yet, been scarcely admitted into the British list. I have seen a specimen in the collection of Mr. Bond, which was killed at Unst, Shetland, on the 4th May, 1854, and about the same year, but in September, another in the same collection was shot at Freshwater in the Isle of Wight.

In the adult plumage the species is easily recognized by the ruddy brown colouring of the upper portions of the plumage, and by the rufous patch upon the throat.

In size it is equal to the Meadow Pipit, and by some naturalists it has been considered a permanent race or variety of that species; but the observations of Prof. Newton on this point[50] certainly tend to show that the species is a valid one. It was met with by him in June, 1855, when in company with Messrs. Wolley and Simpson, in a restricted locality in East Finmark, between WadsÖ and Nyborg, and several well-identified nests were procured. A specimen procured in Heligoland is in Herr GÄtke’s collection.

It is not uncommon as a winter visitant in Turkey, and Mr. Wright has shot many specimens in Malta, where he says it arrives in small flocks in spring and autumn. In Egypt and Nubia this bird quite takes the place of A. pratensis, and is sometimes very common there. It probably winters also in Palestine, although Canon Tristram, during his sojourn there at that season, only met with a single specimen on the coast of the plain of Sharon. It has been found in China, Japan, Formosa, and Hainan, by Mr. Swinhoe, who suggests that this bird in its winter plumage is the Anthus japonicus of Temminck and Schlegel. Mr. Blyth thinks that it should probably be erased from the Indian list, as the ordinary Himalayan species, A. rosaceus of Hodgson, has been confounded with it. Upon this point, however, much difference of opinion prevails. Dr. Jerdon, in his “Birds of India,” gives rosaceus as a synonym of cervinus, and Mr. Hume is puzzled to distinguish rosaceus from arboreus. He says (“Ibis,” 1870, p. 288): “Typical examples of both species seem unmistakably distinct, but intermediate forms of the most puzzling character occur, of such a nature that it really seems to me impossible to decide to which species they ought to be referred.”

Professor Newton considers that the Red-throated Pipit is as yet scarcely entitled to a place in the list of British Birds; nevertheless it is a bird, as he says, whose migratory habits and wide north-eastern range make it very likely to occur in this country, and probably its recognition as an occasional visitor to the British Islands is only a matter of time and observation.