The Yellow Bunting 115 



greenish-white, one of them with only a few delicate hair-lines, a second with a 

 single additional rectangular line across the lower third enclosing a second shorter 

 club-shaped line, the two other eggs were fairly normal in marking ; another nest 

 of four is slightly tinted with lavender, the markings are mostly fine, and look 

 like tangled silk, mixed with a few thicker streaks of purplish-black, one of these 

 eggs is almost a perfect sphere ; other greenish eggs have extraordinary markings 

 (like written notes in music, oriental letters, or the little men which children 

 sometimes draw on their slates) intermixed with finer scrawlings and patches of 

 lavender ; the lavender tinted eggs chiefly differ in being clouded with a deeper 

 shade of the same colour, often at the larger end ; one egg which I obtained 

 vaguely resembles that of a Chaffinch, being of the same size and with very few 

 linear markings, only the diffused patches are greyish-lavender, instead of looking 

 like blood-stains. 



The number of eggs in a clutch varies from four to five, four being the 

 commoner number ; if less are obtained in an incubated condition, either the first 

 nest has been destroyed before the completion of the clutch, or one or more eggs 

 abstracted or broken accidentally. During incubation the hen bird sits very close; 

 so that frequentl}' you may almost tread upon the nest in stepping through tangled 

 brushwood; then ffcyrclup! that sound of hurried flight familiar to the birds' -nester, 

 makes you suddenly look to catch a glimpse of the startled bird rounding a bush, 

 or passing over a hedge ; and in a minute 3'ou are crouching down and turning 

 aside the foliage to look at its treasures : often when searching among brambles 

 and hawthorn have I felt my hand brushed by the wing of this bird as it has 

 started from its nest. 



I am satisfied that three, if not four, broods are reared in a year : the male 

 is said, on good authority, to assist the female in incubation, but in every instance 

 in which I have flushed the bird from the nest, it has invariably been the hen ; 

 indeed the male has always been singing somewhere .close by. It is well-known 

 that the hens of many species as they grow old assume a plumage closely resemb- 

 ling that of the male bird ; therefore, unless a cock of this species has actually 

 been shot, or at least been heard to sing, upon the nest, and its sex proved, I 

 think the statement that it assists the hen in her duties, should be received with 

 a certain amount of hesitation.* 



The food of the Yellow Hammer in the breeding-season consists largely of 

 insects and their larvae ; also, like all the Buntings, this species devours insects 

 whenever it can obtain them ; but, like all more or less insectivorous birds, it is 



* This statemeut has, however, beeu so defiuitel}- made, that doubtless the fact has been proved beyoud 

 all question. 



