146 BRITISH BIRDS. 
In the valley of the Yenesay it was extremely abundant, and its unob- 
trusive and quiet song was constantly heard before the snow, which was 
lying to the depth of five or six feet up to the 1st of June, had sufficiently 
melted to make the forest penetrable. I found the first nest of this bird 
on the 23rd of June. I was on the south bank of the Koorayika, a tribu- 
tary of the Yenesay, and was scrambling through the forest down the 
hill towards my boat, amongst tangled underwood and fallen tree-trunks, 
rotten and moss-grown, when a Little Bunting started up out of the grass 
at my feet. It did not fly away, but flitted from branch to branch within 
six feet of me. I knew at once that it must have a nest ; and in a quarter 
of a minute I found it, half hidden in the grass and moss. It contained 
five eggs. I have seldom seen a bird so tame. The nest was nothing but 
a hole made in the dead leaves, moss, and grass, copiously and carefully 
lined with fine dead grass. I took a second nest in the forest, on the 
opposite bank of the river, on the 29th of June, containing three eggs ; 
this nest was in a similar position to the foregoing, and the behaviour of 
the parent bird precisely the same. On the 30th of June we cast anchor 
about 110 versts below the Koorayika, and I went on shore to shoot, and 
found a third nest of this interesting little bird, containing five eggs, which 
were slightly incubated: this nest was lined with reindeer-hair. On the 
6th of July, a few miles further down the river, I went on shore again, 
and found another nest of the Little Bunting, this time containing six 
eggs ; it was similar to the last, rather more sparingly lined with reindeer- 
hair, but the tameness of the bird was just the same. 
The eggs in the first nest are very handsome, almost exact miniatures of 
those of the Corn-Bunting. The ground-colour is pale grey, with bold 
twisted blotches and irregular round spots of very dark grey, and equally 
large underlying shell-markings of paler grey. The eggs in the second 
nest are much redder, being brown rather than grey, but the markings are 
similar. Those in the third nest have the markings similar to those pre- 
viously described, but the ground-colour is browner, being less olive than 
those of the first clutch and less red than those of the second ; whilst those 
in the fourth nest are intermediate in colour between those of the second 
and third clutches. They vary from ‘78 to ‘68 inch in length, and from 
‘6 to °53 inch in breadth. 
The nest of this bird found by Schrenck on the Lower Amoor was placed 
on the ground between tussocks of moss, and made of grass-straws inter- 
mixed with the spines of the larch and fir. Muiddendorff found two nests 
of this bird on the Boganida river, one containing five and the other four 
eges, three of which he figures in his ‘ Séiugethiere, Vogel und Amphibien ” 
(pl. xii. fig. 4) *, 
* Middendorff’s measurements agree with mine. His largest egg was 20 millimetres 
long. Newton’s measurement of *88 is probably a misprint. 
