BIRDS IN THE MILLET FIELDS 179 



no introduction to the Englishman, for of their clan 

 is the yellow-hammer, the little bird that sits on a 

 fence and calls cheerily " A little bit of bread and no 

 che-e-e-se." Like other grain-eating birds, buntings 

 possess a stout bill — not a coarse beak like that of 

 the bullfinch or even of the sparrow, but a powerful, 

 conical, sharply pointed instrument with which they 

 are able to extract grain from the ear and then 

 husk it preparatory to swallowing it. A peculiarity 

 of the bill of the bunting is that the upper and lower 

 mandibles do not come into contact along their whole 

 length, but are separated in the middle by a gap 

 which gives the beak the appearance of having been 

 used to crack grain too hard for it. 



Fifteen species of bunting visit India. I am not 

 going to attempt to describe all these, for two excellent 

 reasons. The first is that no one would read my 

 descriptions, and the second is that I have never 

 set eyes upon several of the Indian buntings. Three 

 species, however, are very abundant, and one fairly 

 so, in Northern India, during the cold weather. Bunt- 

 ings are not often seen south of Bombay. As they find 

 plenty of grain in northern latitudes, there is no 

 necessity for them to penetrate into the tropics. 

 The grey-necked, the red-headed and the black- 

 headed are the three commonest species. The grey- 

 necked bunting {Emberiza huchanani) is an ashy- 

 brown bird with a reddish tinge in its lower plumage, 

 and a whitish ring round the eye. It is a bird that is 

 apt to pass unnoticed unless looked for. This perhaps 

 explains why Gates wrongly states that the species 



