THE YELLOW BUNTING 
persistent. It consists of a series of monotonous notes on 
an ascending scale, concluding with a harsh, prolonged 
double one, which country-folk say resemble the sentence 
‘¢ A little bit of bread and no cheese.”” The call-note of 
this Bunting is a harsh churrze, sometimes prolonged into 
several notes. ‘The song continues well into the autumn. 
Like the preceding species, its food consists chiefly of seeds 
and grain in winter, of insects and larve in summer, and 
on these its young are mostly reared. In autumn the 
Yellow Bunting becomes more or less gregarious, and 
flocks during hard weather often resort to ricks and farm- 
yards. They often consort with Sparrows and other 
hard-billed birds. As this Bunting rears several broods 
during the season its nest may be found at any time 
between April and August. Its favourite nesting-places 
are in fields and lanes, by the hedgerows, on gorse- and 
bramble-covered ground. ‘The nest is usually made 
amongst the herbage on a. bank, but sometimes a low 
bush or thicket is selected. It is made of dry grass, roots, 
withered stalks, and bits of moss, lined with finer grass 
and roots and horsehair. ‘The four or five eggs are greyish 
or purplish white, spotted, streaked, and lined with dark 
liver-brown, paler brown, and grey. It is the peculiar 
scratchy character of these markings, so characteristic 
of the eggs of Buntings, that has led to the bird’s local 
name of “ Writing Lark,” which, I may add, is by no means 
peculiar to Essex or Surrey, but is widely prevalent in 
many other counties. 
The adult male Yellow Bunting has the crown lemon- 
yellow, sparingly streaked with brown, a yellow eye- 
stripe, the rest of the upper parts chestnut, streaked with 
blackish brown on the back and scapulars; the wings 
are dark brown margined with yellow, the tail dark brown, 
the central feathers with reddish brown margins, the rest 
narrow yellow ones, and the two outermost with a patch 
of white on the inner web. The under parts are yellow, 
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