108 BRITISH BIRDS, WITH THEIR NESTS AND EGGS. 



bring me dull-plumaged birds ; the more intelligent of them have assured me that 

 they have never seen a brightly coloured male Yellow Hammer in the neighbour- 

 hood, which exactly agrees with my own experience. In the males of North Kent, 

 on the other hand, all the males are especially fine in colouring, the dark markings 

 on their heads being so much reduced as to be indiscernible at a short distance. 



The Yellow Hammer is abundant in all open country, but more especially in 

 the better cultivated districts where one sees the males dotted here and there like 

 sentinels on the topmost sprays of the hedges, or sailing with rapid undulating 

 flight down the lanes and country roads ; in wild moorland and commons this bird 

 may also be often seen, though at times when it sits upon a flowering furze-bush 

 it is overlooked until its ringing song directs one's attention to the performer. 



The song of the Yellow Bunting is not especially meritorious, though bright 

 and cheering ; it consists of a rapid descending scale made up of a repetition of 

 a sharp note which may be rendered chip or chink, and terminating with a double 

 note chee-chee ; it rather suggests the shaking up of shillings between the hands, 

 and has been likened to the words " Give me a little bit of bread and no cheese," 

 though " green cheese " would have been a better interpretation : occasionally the 

 double note is omitted ; but more especially when the bird is beginning to sing 

 in the early spring. Being a late breeder this species continues his song well 

 into the autumn, and often recommences in February. The male call-note is 

 described as chich, chick, churr. 



The nidification of this bird commences about the middle of z\pril, and not 

 unfrequently continues up to the end of August : I have myself taken a nest as 

 late as the i2th August with three fresh eggs (Vide "Zoologist" for December, 

 1883) and eggs have been obtained in September. 



The nest is usually placed low down, though occasionally at a distance of from 

 four to five feet above the ground in a hedge, and (according to Howard Saunders) 

 exceptionally at a height of seven feet. I have often found it in low bushes, but 

 only once in furze ; in low scrub on partially cleared waste ground ; in holes in 

 grassy banks by the road-side ; or under a low dividing hedge between fields ; also 

 at a considerable height (from thirty to forty feet) in a niche in the side of a 

 gravel or chalk-pit surrounded by tufts of plantain and grass. The structure is a 

 loose one, occasionally so much so that, when taken, the outer walls have to be 

 supported to prevent their falling apart ; these consist of coarse straws, dead 

 grasses, and sometimes a few twigs interlaced ; and, in one nest which I took 

 from a hedge, there was an edging of dead chestnut leaves ; the lining consists of 

 fine withered grass-bents, and a few rootlets and horsehairs. 



The eggs of the Yellow Hammer are extremely variable, both in ground-tint 



