20"8 CORN-BUNTING. 



Xubia, Arabia Petrsa, Bushire and Sind. In forest and mountain 

 regions it is practically unknown. 



The Corn-Bunting is a late breeder, and in this country it is 

 usually futile to search for its eggs before the latter part of May. 

 The nest may often be found in rough herbage, or at the foot of a 

 low shrub, but is generally placed well towards the middle of a field 

 of clover, grass, or peas, or under a clod among young corn ; while 

 some umbelliferous plant, sufficiently strong to afford a perch for 

 the bird, will probably be at no great distance from it. Straw, a 

 little moss, roots and dry grass, with hair for a lining, are the 

 materials employed to form the somewhat loose structure ; the eggs, 

 4-5 in number, are of a dull purplish-white, or sometimes ochreous, 

 blotched and streaked with dark purple-brown : measurements 

 •98 in. by "7 in. The hen sits closely, whilst the male utters 

 his harsh and monotonous iic-iic-teese on a perch, which varies in 

 elevation from the top of some tall tree or a hedgerow to a clod in 

 the fallows. The flight is heavy and laboured, the legs of the bird 

 hanging down at first, as if broken. The young are fed on insects ; 

 the adults have been seen to eat cockchafers, and they undoubtedly 

 devour numbers of small beetles ; but in autumn and winter grain 

 is largely consumed, and the birds become so fat that, in the south 

 of Europe, they are much in request for the table. Many are taken 

 in nets, together with Larks, owing to their habit of roosting on the 

 ground, and Booth says that near Shoreham numbers resort in the 

 evening to the beds of marine weeds which grow on the mud-flats 

 above high-water mark. 



The adult male has the lores, and a line above and behind the eye 

 buffish-white ; ear-patches, head, neck, mantle and upper tail coverts 

 pale hair-brown, .streaked with darker brown down the middle of each 

 feather ; wing-coverts dark brown with buff margins ; quills dusky- 

 brown ; tail-feathers rather lighter brown with pale edges ; throat 

 buffish-white, with brown spots at the side which form a streak ; 

 remaining under parts buffish-white, freely spotted on the breast and 

 streaked on the flanks with brown ; bill yellowish-brown, with a dark 

 stripe along the ridge of the upper mandible ; legs pale flesh-colour. 

 Length 7 in. ; wing 3 '6 in. The sexes are alike in plumage. The 

 young bird is darker, with broad fulvous margins to the wing-coverts 

 and secondaries, and the under parts are tinged with buff. Some 

 Continental specimens — especially those from the east— are very pale 

 in colour. Albinistic varieties are not uncommon. 



