1584 



THE PERCHING BIRDS 



grain. The nest of the common bunting is a loose structure, built upon the ground 

 in a tuft of rough herbage, and constructed of dry grass bents and pieces of moss, 

 lined with finer stems of grass and sometimes a little hair. The eggs vary greatly 

 in coloration, being either white or buff in ground color, blotched and streaked 

 with purplish brown, gray, and pale brown. Not unfrequently the common bunt- 

 ing assumes a white or cream-colored plumage; one shot a few years ago being as 

 yellow as a canary. The usual color is dull brown above, streaked with darker 

 brown; the under parts being buffy white, and the breast and flanks streaked with 

 black. 



ORTOLAN BUNTING AND BLACK-HEADED BUNTING. 



(Five-eighths natural size.) 



Black-Headed 

 Bunting 



Southeastern Europe is the home of the handsome black-headed 

 bunting (E. melanocephala) , which but rarely strays into Western 

 Europe, though it has been obtained repeatedly upon the island of 

 Heligoland, and on two occasions in Great Britain. In Greece and Turkey, on the 

 other hand, it is a common summer bird. Lindermayer gives the following account 

 of its habits: "This bunting arrives always in the last five days of April in 

 Greece, and, like other migrants, appears everywhere at once, so that the flats near 

 the sea, which are covered with vines and other creepers, and also places where the 



