THE BUNTINGS 1583 



to a depth of five or six feet up to the first of June, had sufficiently melted to make 

 the forest penetrable. I found the first nest of this bird on the twenty-third of 

 June. I was on the south bank of the Koorayika, a tributary of the Yenisei, and 

 was scrambling through the forest down the hill toward my boat, among tangled 

 underwood and fallen tree trunks, rotten and moss grown, when a little bunting 

 started 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, grass, and moss, 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 twenty-ninth of June, containing three eggs; this nest was in a similar posi- 

 tion to the foregoing, and the behavior of the parent bird precisely the same. On 

 the thirtieth of June we cast anchor about one hundred and ten versts below 

 the Koorayika, and I went on shore to shoot, and found a third nest of this interest- 

 ing little bird, containing five eggs which were slightly incubated; this nest was 

 lined with reindeer hair. On the sixth 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 color is pale gray, with bold twisted blotches and irregular round spots 

 of very dark gray, and equally large underlying shell markings of paler gray. The 

 eggs in the second nest are much redder, being brown rather than gray, but 

 the markings are similar." The adult male little bunting in breeding dress has 

 the upper parts rufous brown, with broad black centres to the feathers; the 

 centre of the crown is vinous chestnut, with a broad black streak on each side, 

 forming a band; a superciliary line, lores, sides of face, ear coverts, and throat, 

 are all vinous chestnut. The remainder of the lower parts are dull white, the 

 lower throat, fore-neck, and breast, as well as the sides of the body, streaked 

 with black. The adult female scarcely differs from the male, but is not quite so 

 bright colored. 



This dull-colored heavy bird (E. miliaria} is common in many parts 

 Common ,. .. 



Bunting Europe, from Southern Spain to the Hebrides; but being to a large 



extent dependent upon grain crops for its existence, its distribution 

 naturally varies with that cereal. Sometimes it frequents the pastures, uttering its 

 droning song from the top of some tall hedgerow tree, but more often it frequents 

 arable fields, where it utters its short mechanical song from a clod of earth, a clump 

 of dockweed, or the coping of some stone wall or turf dike. Although Mr. Dresser 

 asserts that the corn bunting, as this species is often termed, is seen only in pairs 

 during the breeding season, we have seen as many as a hundred of these birds flying 

 together at the end of May, and can vouch for their associating together in numbers 

 even in the nesting time. Sometimes they roost upon the ground like skylarks, but 

 we have known them to roost habitually in a fir plantation. They feed partially on 

 insects, but in autumn and midwinter they appear to subsist almost entirely on 



