THE FINCHES 



147 



and again in early autumn long after 

 the}' have departed, or, at any rate, 

 ceased to sing. The late song of the 

 " Guler " is accounted for by the fact 

 that it is double-brooded. August is the 

 most silent month of the year so far as 

 the music of the birds is concerned, but 

 the Yellow Hammer still persists, and on 

 Aug. 27th. 1903, I found eggs still un- 

 hatched. Three seems to be the common 

 complement, especially of the later 

 clutches. 



Not to be confounded with the 

 Yellow Hammer is the Cirl Bunting, a 

 bird which is of far more restricted 

 range, and chiefly to be found in the south 

 of England. The male of this species 

 has the chin, cheeks, and 

 throat black in the breeding 

 plumage ; otherwise it is. to 

 all appearances, a rather 

 small and shy Yellow Ham- 

 mer, and is, perhaps, rather 

 more a bird of the trees 

 than of the fences. In both 

 species the females are less 

 highly coloured than the 

 males, and in winter both 

 sexes are rendered less con- 

 spicuous by brown feather 

 tips, which subdue the bright 

 canary \-ellow of their heads 

 and under parts. 



The Reed Bunting is not 

 restricted to reed beds, for 

 wherever there is a piece of 

 water of any extent sup- 

 porting rank vegetation 

 around it — be it sedge 

 swamp or osier ground — 

 there the resident Reed 

 Sparrow may be looked for. 

 The male is not very 

 strikingly arrayed, but his 

 black cap and throat, re- 

 lieved by white - splashed 

 cheeks, and his two white- 

 webbed tail feathers, con- 

 spicuous in flight as he flits 

 from orte spray to another, 

 are pretty sure to attract 

 attention, if his " tschee- 

 ing " call-note cannot be 

 heard. Should his ground- 

 placed nest be discovered, 

 and his more Sparrow-like 



mate be incubating her typical Bunting 

 eggs (but more darkly grounded and less 

 finely scribbled than those of the Yellow 

 Hammer), he will strive to attract 

 attention to himself by his cries, whilst 

 she will indulge, perhaps, in the well- 

 known Partridge-like device of fluttering 

 helplessness. 



One of the first signs of real spring is 

 the sprightly song of the gay Cock Chaf- 

 finch, the Bachelor Finch of Linnaeus, 

 who first observed, or at least first re- 

 corded, the autumnal separation of its 

 sexes. The metallic call-note of the male 

 has given it, in many countries, the 

 sobriquet of "Spink," a name which 

 will surely serve to identify one of the 



FEMALE CHAFFINCH AT iNLST. 



