INSESSORES. 77 



YELLOW BUNTING, or YELLOWHAMMER, Emberiza, 

 citrinella. This is our commonest species of Bunt- 

 ing, and is resident throughout the year. Many 

 birds, of late years, have suffered a considerable 

 decrease in their numbers, from an interference with 

 their nesting-places, and owing to the prevailing 

 habit of " plashing," or laying the hedgerows, and 

 an increased cultivation of waste lands, they have 

 gradually been driven further and further from our 

 homesteads. 



Happily the sprightly Yellowhammer is not one 

 of these. He makes his nest in a hedge-bank, or at 

 the foot of a low-growing bush, a preference being 

 given to furze, and while other and less sociable 

 birds seek their living in the open fields, he con- 

 fidingly visits our rick yards and poultry yards to 

 pick up the scattered grain. In the summer he 

 makes us a return for what he thus takes, by car- 

 rying off great numbers of destructive caterpillars. 



His song, scarcely worthy of the name, must be 

 familiar to all, from the monotonous and frequent 

 repetition with which it is uttered during the summer 

 months. Reduced to writing, it is, 









CIRL BUNTING, Emberiza cirlus. Peculiarly a 

 southern species, and in this county only an occa- 

 sional visitant, seldom coming so far north. It has 



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