146 BRITISH BIRDS. 



In the valley of the Yenesay it was extremely abundant, and its unob- 

 trusive and quiet song was constantly heard before the snow, which was 

 lying to the depth of five or six feet up to the 1st of June, had sufficiently 

 melted to make the forest penetrable. I found the first nest of this bird 

 on the 23rd of June. I was on the south bank of the Koorayika, a tribu- 

 tary of the Yenesay, and was scrambling through the forest down the 

 hill towards my boat, amongst tangled underwood and fallen tree-trunks, 

 rotten and moss-grown, when a Little Bunting started up out of the grass 

 at my feet. It did not fly away, but flitted from branch to branch within 

 six feet of me. I knew at once that it must have a nest ; and in a quarter 

 of a minute I found it, half hidden in the grass and moss. It contained 

 five eggs. I have seldom seen a bird so tame. The nest was nothing but 

 a hole made in the dead leaves, moss, and grass, copiously and carefully 

 lined with fine dead grass. I took a second nest in the forest, on the 

 opposite bank of the river, on the 29th of June, containing three eggs ; 

 this nest was in a similar position to the foregoing, and the behaviour of 

 the parent bird precisely the same. On the 30th of June we cast anchor 

 about 1 10 versts below the Koorayika, and I went on shore to shoot, and 

 found a third nest of this interesting little bird, containing five eggs, which 

 were slightly incubated : this nest was lined with reindeer-hair. On the 

 6th of July, a few miles further down the river, I went on shore again, 

 and found another nest of the Little Bunting, this time containing six 

 eggs ; it was similar to the last, rather more sparingly lined with reindeer- 

 hair, but the tameness of the bird was just the same. 



The eggs in the first nest are very handsome, almost exact miniatures of 

 those of the Corn-Bunting. The ground-colour is pale grey, with bold 

 twisted blotches and irregular round spots of very dark grey, and equally 

 large underlying shell-markings of paler grey. The eggs in the second 

 nest are much redder, being brown rather than grey, but the markings are 

 similar. Those in the third nest have the markings similar to those pre- 

 viously described, but the ground-colour is browner, being less olive than 

 those of the first clutch and less red than those of the second ; whilst those 

 in the fourth nest are intermediate in colour between those of the second 

 and third clutches. They vary from -78 to '68 inch in length, and from 

 6 to "53 inch in breadth. 



The nest of this bird found by Schrenck on the Lower Amoor was placed 

 on the ground between tussocks of moss, and made of grass-straws inter- 

 mixed with the spines of the larch and fir. Middendorff found two nests 

 of this bird on the Boganida river, one containing five and the other four 

 eggs, three of which he figures in his ' Saugethiere, Vogel und Amphibien ' 

 (pi. xiii. fig. 4) *. 



* MiddendorfFs measurements agree with mine. His largest egg was 20 millimetres 

 long. Newton's measurement of '88 is probably a misprint. 



