THE YELLOW BUNTING 



persistent. It consists of a series of monotonous notes on 

 an ascending scale, concluding with, a harsh, prolonged 

 double one, which country-folk say resemble the sentence 

 " A little bit of bread and no cheese." The call-note of 

 this Bunting is a harsh cburrze, sometimes prolonged into 

 several notes. The song continues well into the autumn. 

 Like the preceding species, its food consists chiefly of seeds 

 and grain in winter, of insects and larvae in summer, and 

 on these its young are mostly reared. In autumn the 

 Yellow Bunting becomes more or less gregarious, and 

 flocks during hard weather often resort to ricks and farm- 

 yards. They often consort with Sparrows and other 

 hard-billed birds. As this Bunting rears several broods 

 during the season its nest may be found at any time 

 between April and August. Its favourite nesting-places 

 are in fields and lanes, by the hedgerows, on gorse- and 

 bramble-covered ground. The nest is usually made 

 amongst the herbage on a bank, but sometimes a low 

 bush or thicket is selected. It is made of dry grass, roots, 

 withered stalks, and bits of moss, lined with finer grass 

 and roots and horsehair. The four or five eggs are greyish 

 or purplish white, spotted, streaked, and lined with dark 

 liver-brown, paler brown, and grey. It is the peculiar 

 scratchy character of these markings, so characteristic 

 of the eggs of Buntings, that has led to the bird's local 

 name of " Writing Lark," which, I may add, is by no means 

 peculiar to Essex or Surrey, but is widely prevalent in 

 many other counties. 



The adult male Yellow Bunting has the crown lemon- 

 yellow, sparingly streaked with brown, a yellow eye- 

 stripe, the rest of the upper parts chestnut, streaked with 

 blackish brown on the back and scapulars ; the wings 

 are dark brown margined with yellow, the tail dark brown, 

 the central feathers with reddish brown margins, the rest 

 narrow yellow ones, and the two outermost with a patch 

 of white on the inner web. The under parts are yellow, 



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