4 o 



went off on a foraging expedition, I slipped into the gorse and 

 hid myself. After a long wait I saw the bird drop into the gorse 

 about fifty yards lower down and, marking the exact place, I 

 followed him up quickly and put the hen Bunting off the care- 

 fully hidden nest. Only in this way are you likely to find a 

 Cirl Bunting's nest. 



The nest, placed in the very thickest of the tangle, about 

 two feet from the ground, closely resembled that of the Yellow- 

 hammer. The eggs, shown in our illustration, though possessing 

 the characteristic markings of the Buntings, can be easily dis- 

 tinguished from those of any other member of the family. I 

 make it a rule never to take any eggs, but on this occasion I 

 transgressed the rule because the Cirl Bunting is not a rare bird 

 and I was particularly anxious to see if I could rear the young 

 under a hen Canary. So we tied up the eggs in moss and sus- 

 pended them so as to be in contact with the water jacket of the 

 8-h.p. engine of our small motor-car, and in this way they were 

 kept beautifully warm during our thirteen miles drive home- 

 Never probably since that far-off day, in the dim and distant past, 

 when the first Cirl Bunting laid its first egg, have any embryo 

 Cirl Buntings found themselves in similar surroundings! The 

 eggs hatched in four days but the foster mother, in spite of much 

 patient effort, failed to rear the young. 



This species is rather a late breeder, but generally succeeds- 

 in rearing two broods between the beginning of June and the end 

 of August. The song, which may be heard at any time between 

 February and the latter month, has been compared to that of the 

 Lesser Whitethroat and the Wood Wren, but to my mind it is 

 simply the song of the Yellowhammer with the long drawn out 

 final syllable omitted. Whilst singing the bird throws its beak 

 upwards until it is nearly vertical. The reason of this is simply, 

 I think, the bird's desire to show off its singularly marked throat. 

 In the same way the Pope Cardinal, in the days of his courtship, 

 displays his crimson gorget ; the cock Chaffinch droops his wing 

 to show the white bars; the Crested Lark raises his wings to 

 show his speckled breast, and a certain well-known actress, who is 

 frequently photographed, assumes an expansive smile which 

 reveals nearly the whole of a very nice set of teeth. 



