50 BRITISH JJIRDS, THEIR EGGS AND NESTS. 



lark head and bright plumage of the male. On the Essex 

 aiarshes it is common enough, and so it is in the marshy or ill- 

 drained meadows of other counties. Mr. Yarrell says the " nest 

 is generally placed on the gromd, among coarse long grass or 

 rushes, at the foot of a thorn, or on the side of a canal bank. 3 * 

 The last I found was among, and supported by, the sedges 

 growing at the side of a marsh-ditch in Essex, and not less than 

 ten or twelve inches from the bank a site which I believe is not 

 an unusual one. It is made of grasses, fragments of rushes, 

 stalks of different plants, and lined sometimes with reed-down, 

 or finer grasses and a little moss. I dislodged the male bird 

 from the nest just named, and the eggs were perfectly warm to 

 the touch. They would have been hatched in a few days. It was 

 thus proved that the male Reed-bunting takes his share in 

 sitting, and the position of the nest among green and growing 

 sedges adds one more fact to what is known of its nidification. 

 The eggs are four or five in number, of a pale reddish-brown 

 colour, streaked and spotted with dark brown of a rich purple 

 shade. Eig. 2, plate IV. 



94. YELLOW HAMMER (Em beriza citrinella). 



Yellow Bunting, Yellow Yowley, Gold-spink, Yellow Yeldring, 

 fellow Yoldring, or Yeorling, Yeldrock, Yellow Yite, Yoit, &c. 

 I used to hear in Berwickshire, that 



" The Brock, the Toad, and the Yellow Yeorling, 

 Get a drap o' the Deil's bluid ilka May morning." 



1 wonder what they all do with it, and how the plentiful bleeding 

 affects the patient. Eor there is certainly no lack of Yellow- 

 Hammers all over the country ; and if one looks at the long 

 strings of blown birds' eggs festooned at cottage doors, or hung 

 over the cottage or farm-house mantel-piece, the trophies of some 

 young nest-taking hopeful dwelling there, after the Blackbirds' 

 and Thrushes' eggs, the most abuuianb are almost always those 

 of the Yellow-Hammer. We all know his rich plumage and 

 somewhat plaintive song, which, in my school-boy days, used to 

 be Englished into " A very, very little bit of bread and n-o-o 

 c-h-e-e-e-s-e ! " It does not spare materials when engaged in 

 building its nest. Dead grass, small sticks and moss, a few 

 feathers and plentiful hair to form the lining, are ready enough 

 in our fields for its use, and the structure compacted with them 

 is placed usually in a low, thick bush on a hedge-bank, well con- 

 cealed, and but little raised above the soil. Sometimes I have 

 found it in a rough grass-field, am d tufts of rushes and other 

 such-like growth. Sometimes even in a wall-tree, as in my own 

 garden last year or in an erergreen shrub, also in my garden a 



