GIRL BUNTINGS IN SUSSEX 63 



indeed, I have never heard a " Girl " sing so well 

 or for so long first, from the topmost, shivering 

 spike of a lordly cedar ; then from a lowly fruit 

 tree ; anon, from the scented greenery of a walnut ; 

 while once, for no apparent reason it seemed, he 

 tried on the don't-you-see-I'm-wounded dodge, 

 fluttering and fussing along the ground in and 

 around a bed of newly-sown peas in the kitchen 

 garden, trailing a pinion and dragging his broadly- 

 expanded tail. I must have been remarkable close 

 to the nest then, but I never found it. As an 

 afterthought, I believe it was on a flat branch of 

 the cedar hard-by, where at the moment I never 

 thought of looking. 



There is practically but one method of finding a 

 Girl's " nest : that is by beating out and searching 

 all the likely cover in and around any spot where 

 the male sings regularly. If there are two people 

 in the game, so much the better, since you then 

 have an operator on each side of the hedge, quite a 

 necessary precaution when it is recollected that any 

 bird especially one flushed from eggs is prone to 

 pop out of a hedgerow on the opposite side to that 

 on which you are working solo. This means that, 

 although you will certainly hear the rustle, you 

 seldom get a fair view of your quarry, if indeed 

 you get one at all. In one way, however, all the 

 Buntings are straightforward in their tactics ; I 

 mean they one and all, when flushed from 

 their nest, crash right off into the open. They 



