166 BRITISH BIRDS. 
looked, we must assume that India is its only winter-quarters ; but it is 
possible that future explorations may prove that the European examples 
of this species winter in Arabia. Further north and west in Europe it 
appears to be only an accidental visitor. It has been occasionally met 
with in the south of France, Germany, and Austria. In South Russia an 
example has been recorded from Kiev. I noticed a fine male in the 
museum at Archangel, said to have been shot in the neighbourhood ; and 
it has occurred several times on Heligoland. It has no ally with which it 
can easily be confounded. 
As might be expected from the unusual line of migration taken by the 
Black-headed Bunting, it is one of the latest birds of passage to reach its 
breeding-grounds. In Greece and Asia Minor it does not arrive until the 
end of April, amongst the last half-dozen summer migrants. As soon as 
it comes nest-building commences; and during the last half of May its 
eggs are so abundant in the olive- and vine-region of the Parnassus that 
when I was there I had not time to blow more than half of the clutches 
which I found or saw. One reason may perhaps have been that the nest of 
this bird was the easiest of all nests to find. The males were so extremely 
handsome and so very conspicuous that whilst it may perhaps be scarcely 
correct to say that no other species of bird was so common, certainly no 
other appeared to be so. In the pine-region, from four to six thousand 
feet above the level of the sea, they were, however, very rare. As you 
look down from the ruins of the temple of Apollo at Castri, the ancient 
Delphi, over the forest of olives which stretches away beyond Chrisso 
down to Itea on the shores of the Gulf of Lepanto, the grey trees look 
like a dense mass of wood impenetrable to the hot sunshine; but when 
you are strolling in the forest itself, down in the plain, you find that each 
tree is isolated, and that endless vineyards, and now and then a corn- 
field, intervene. Sometimes the valley is bounded by a cliff, the home of 
the Rock-Sparrow and the Dalmatian Nuthatch and where Vultures and 
Eagles breed; but more often the plain joins a steep rocky slope, where 
the olives are smaller and more scattered, and where clematis and white 
and pink roses half conceal the stony ground, and dwarf oleanders, pome- 
granates, figs, almonds, and other shrubs compose a half-wild landscape, 
the only sign of cultivation being a vine-terrace here and there. This 
seems to be the paradise of the Black-headed Bunting; and it is not 
an uncommon thing to see three or four males perched conspicuously on 
the top of as many isolated trees, singing in rivalry. When disturbed it 
seldom flies far, but drops down from its perch, and after a short flight, 
low and undulating, rises up again to the nearest tree-top, on which it is 
so anxious to perch that its legs may be seen extended for the purpose long 
before the desired haven is reached. In spite of what has been written to 
the contrary, I cannot but consider this bird a typical Bunting in its habits. 
