CHAPTER XLIII 



THE LAND-BUNTING 



The buntings are the most constant, most frequent, and 

 often the sweetest of our summer songsters. All day, 

 from the young May morn to the full yellow harvest season, 

 you may hear the yellow bunting in the flowery, leafy 

 hedgerows; the reed-bunting on the swampy marshes, and 

 the land-bunting on the grassy marshes reclaimed from the 

 fenland. Their songs differ in quality, yet it is a family 

 song, a short, sweet, pacifying song, a song fit for sultry 

 days, recalling the tone of some aeolian harp. From morn 

 to even at this season you may at almost any hour hear 

 some of the buntings, though the reed-bunting sings in the 

 early watches of the night. 



But we must confine ourselves to the corn-bunting, or 

 the land-bunting, as he is called down there in the grass 

 marshes, in the roar of the North Sea. There you may see 

 him in the winter feeding in flocks with his congeners the 

 finches and brother buntings; but the oat-stubble is dearest 

 to him ; there he loves to wander beside the sandhills feed- 

 ing mid the cries of the gulls. He loves, too, as do the 

 mavises and partridges, the wet balks of the turnip-fields. 

 But he is scarce worth eating, being rather bitter. And 

 later, when the buds begin to burst on the sallows, you will 

 hear him singing from some bare spray of bramble, and see 

 him flying with his legs hanging down if you startle him, 

 and mayhap you may hear his peculiar shrieking startled 

 note of fright. But he is less common in spring and 

 summer than in winter; perchance he seeks the grassy 



