74 BRITISH BIRDS, THEIR EGGS AND NESTS. 
thus proved that the male Reed Bunting takes his share in 
sitting, and the position of the nest among green and growing 
sedges adds one more fact to what is known of its nidification. 
The eggs are four or five in number, of a pale reddish-brown 
colour, streaked and spotted with dark brown of a rich purple 
shade.—Lig. 2, plate IV. 
94. YELLOW HAMMER—(Lnberiza citrinella). 
Yellow Bunting, Yellow Yowley, Gold-spink, Yellow Yeldring, 
Yellow Yoldring, or Yedrling, Yeldrock, Yellow Yite, Yoit, &e.— 
I used to hear in Berwickshire, that 
“The Brock, the Toad, and the Yellow Yeérling, 
Get a drap o’ the Deil’s bluid ilka May morning.” 
I wonder what they all do with it, and how the plentiful bleeding. 
affects the patient. For there is certainly no lack of Yellow 
Hammers all over the country; and if one looks at the long 
strings of blown birds’ eggs festooned at cottage doors, or hung 
over the cottage or farm-house mantel-piece, the trophies of some 
young nest-taking hopeful dwelling there, after the Blackbirds’ 
and Thrushes’ eggs, the most abundant are almost always those 
of the Yellow Hammer. We all know his rich plumage and 
somewhat plaintive song, which, in my school-boy days, used to 
be Englished into “Avery, very little bit of bread and n-0-o 
c-h-e-e-e-s-e!” It does not spare materials when engaged in 
building its nest. Dead grass, small sticks and moss, a few 
feathers and plentiful hair to form the lining, are ready enough 
in our fields for its use, and: the structure compacted with them 
is placed usually in a low, thick bush on a hedge-bank, well con- 
cealed, and but little raised above the soil. Sometimes I have 
found it in a rough erass-field, amid tufts of rushes and other 
such-like growth. Sometimes even in a wall-tree, as in my own 
garden last year ; or in an’evergreen shrub, also in my garden a 
