A HISTORY OF WARWICKSHIRE 



67. Corn-Bunting. Emberiza mi/iana. Linn. 

 A common though not by any means an 



abundant bird. Formerly it used to frequent 

 fields of vetches, in which the nest was often 

 placed ; but of late years, since fewer vetches 

 have been planted, the nest is more frequently 

 found in coarse herbage of any kind, but not 

 often in the bottoms of hedges. 



68. Yellow Hammer. Emberiza citrine/la, 



Linn. 

 An abundant and resident bird. 



69. Cirl Bunting. Emberiza cir/us, Linn. 



A very locally distributed bird even within 

 the limits of the county, but nevertheless a 

 resident one. It appears to be most frequent 

 in some parts of the valley of the Avon, for in- 

 stance near Stratford, while at Leamington, as 

 I learn from Mr. Peter Spicer, it is of rare 

 occurrence, only two having come into his 

 hands during a period of more than twenty 

 years. Although recorded by Mr. Aplin as 

 occurring near Banbury there is no evidence 

 of its presence in the near part of Warwick- 

 shire. Around Birmingham and in the Tarn- 

 worth district it is unknown. 



70. Reed-Bunting. Emberiza schaenic/us, Linn. 

 A resident bird, frequenting the sides of 



streams or pools. 



7 1 . Snow - Bunting. Plectrophenax nivalis 



(Linn.) 



A rare winter straggler. One is recorded 

 from Harborne near Birmingham, and Mr. T. 

 Ground informs me of one that appeared 

 at Haywood near that city in the winter of 

 1894-5. Near Stratford the snow-bunting 

 has appeared on two or three occasions, always 

 in the winter. 



72. Starling. Sturnus vu/garis, Linn. 



Mr. O. V. Aplin, speaking of the starling 

 as an Oxfordshire bird, says, 'An abundant 

 and increasing resident,' which is precisely 

 what may be said of it as a Warwickshire 

 bird. Towards the end of summer great 

 flocks visit the bean fields and feed on the 

 aphides which sometimes abound there. 



73. Rose-coloured Starling. Pastor roseus 



(Linn.) 



A male in nearly adult plumage was shot 

 in a cherry orchard at Barton in the parish of 

 Bidford in the summer of 1854 by a man 

 engaged in keeping birds from the ripening 

 cherries. A second, an adult male, which 

 had been shot somewhere near that town, 

 was brought to Mr. Hunt of Alcester for 

 preservation. 



196 



74. Jay. Garrulus glandarius (Linn.) 



A common resident, frequenting woods and 

 coppices. 



75. Jackdaw. Corvus monedula, Linn. 

 Common and resident wherever there are 



suitable nesting places. Three broods are 

 sometimes reared by the same pair of birds, 

 as the writer has determined by the observa- 

 tion of a nest in the hole of a tree on his 

 premises. Such was the case in the summer 

 of 1900. 



76. Magpie. Pica rustica (Scopoli) 



Much less abundant throughout the whole 

 of the county than formerly. The nest of 

 the magpie is well worth careful examination. 

 Dead but not decayed thorns are largely, 

 indeed almost exclusively, made use of as 

 material, and they are so well put together 

 that even when in the very top of a tall tree 

 in an exposed place the nest is rarely if ever 

 blown out. Fine flexible roots constitute its 

 lining. 







77. Raven. Corvus corax, Linn. 



It is many years since the raven last 

 nested in Warwickshire or even made its 

 appearance there. Between thirty and forty 

 years ago the Rev. W. T. Bree of Allesley 

 near Coventry, then a man advanced in years, 

 informed the writer that he remembered the 

 raven breeding in that neighbourhood in the 

 early part of his life, but that no nests had been 

 known for many years. An aged native of 

 Snitterfield often spoke to the writer of the 

 nesting of the raven in his boyhood in some 

 great elms near that place, which he said had 

 years before disappeared from age, hurricanes or 

 the axe. Within the memory of the present 

 writer the raven was an occasional visitor to the 

 county, and it was no uncommon thing to see 

 one or perhaps a pair pass over and betray 

 their presence by their croaking. On one 

 occasion the remains of one were seen nailed 

 to the gable of a building with other so-called 

 vermin at Coughton Court, the residence ot 

 the Throckmorton family. In 1841 a raven 

 frequented a rickyard at Clopton near Strat 

 ford-on-Avon, where it fed on dead rats, 

 which had been trapped in a rickyard and 

 thrown out into an adjacent field. A raven 

 which was shot by the keeper in the park 

 at Warwick Castle some time in the ' fifties ' 

 is now in the writer's collection. 



78. Carrion-Crow. Corvus corone, Linn. 

 The numbers of this handsome bird a 



miniature raven have greatly decreased with- 

 in the last twenty or thirty years except in a 



