92 OUR RARER BIRDS 



dense and impenetrable branches of the prickly furze, or 

 under the long trailing wires of the bramble and the dog rose 

 which arch gracefully over it. When on the ground the nest 

 is built in a little hollow on a bank or behind a tuft of grass 

 at the foot of the trees. It is a slight structure, made ex- 

 ternally of coarse grass, dead leaves, and roots, and lined with 

 finer roots and a little hair. The Girl Bunting obtains much 

 of its nest material from the heaps of "twitch" or "bull polls" 

 which are collected from the fields in spring and burned. 

 The eggs are four or five in number, bluish-white in ground 

 colour, blotched, spotted, streaked, and scratched in true 

 Bunting style with dark liver-brown. The eggs very closely 

 resemble those of the Yellow Bunting, but when compared 

 are much more rotund, the pencilled markings are darker, and 

 the ground colour is more blue than purple. The female bird 

 performs the task of incubation, and during the whole of the 

 period the male seldom strays far, but sits on the neighbouring 

 trees and cheers her with his simple song. 



The food of the Girl Bunting is composed of various kinds 

 of insects in summer, and in autumn and winter this fare 

 is varied with seeds of many kinds and grain. In autumn 

 Girl Buntings gather into little flocks, and often mingle with 

 Yellow Buntings, Greenfinches, Chaffinches, and Bramblings, 

 frequenting the fields and tangled hedges, where newly sown 

 grain and the seeds of tall weeds furnish an abundant supply 

 of food. 



The second of these little choristers is a winter visitor to 

 our shores an arctic stranger driven southwards by the 

 severity of the polar winter. I am, however, perfectly con- 

 vinced that this bird breeds on the Grampians, although I 

 have never actually seen the nest or the young hence my 

 reason for inserting this species among our rarer birds. It is 

 a thorough little bird of the snow and the arctic regions a 

 gipsy migrant that never seems settled here, and always 



