4 i 4 PERCHING BIRDS. 



was sufficiently tame to take insects from the hand, showing a great partiality to 

 such a repast, and, when let out of the cage, catching flies in the windows. The 

 cirl bunting bears some resemblance to the yellow bunting in plumage, but the 

 male is readily distinguished by the fact that the head and nape are olive-green, 

 and the rump and upper tail-coverts olive -green streaked with dusky; while a 

 bright stripe extends over the eye, and another below it. The wings and tail are 

 similar to those of the yellow bunting, but the lesser wing-coverts are olive-green 

 instead of chestnut. The throat is dull black, below which is a broad patch of 

 yellow, and a zone of olive-green extends across the breast, shading into chestnut. 

 The female cirl bunting can always be distinguished from the female yellow bunting 

 by the head never showing any trace of yellow, the under-parts being not so 

 bright a yellow: while the rump and upper tail -coverts are olive instead of 

 chestnut. 



The far-famed ortolan (E. Iwrtulana), shown in the upper figure 

 ' on p. 410, for which fabulous prices were sometimes paid by the 

 epicures of the last century, is a near relative of the cirl bunting ; and, like that 

 species, is more common in Southern Europe than further north. The tameness 

 of the ortolan buntings outside the city of Pampeluna, in Spain, is almost ludicrous. 

 So little do they apprehend injury, that they will allow visitors to lie on the grass 

 while they forage round for earth-worms ; these birds feeding partly on grass seeds 

 and partly on worms. The ortolan bunting often resorts to the edges of thickets 

 and the skirts of fir- woods ; and its song somewhat resembles that of the yellow 

 bunting. In Sweden the ortolan sings both during the day and throughout the 

 light nights of the Arctic summer. The nests, which are invariably placed upon 

 the ground, and generally in the open fields, are built of dry grass or roots, 

 and lined with fine fibres or hair. The eggs vary in ground-colour from bluish 

 white to pale salmon colour, spotted and blotched with rich purple-brown. Mr. 

 Seebohm observes that " it is somewhat remarkable that a bird so common on 

 the Continent, and all the countries adjacent to the British Islands, should be so 

 rare in Britain. I found the ortolan bunting breeding on the mountains in the pine 

 regions both of Greece and Asia Minor. When I was at Valconswaards we con- 

 stantly heard its plaintive, monotonous song as it sat perched for a long time on 

 the branch of a tree, in the lanes or in the hedges that surrounded the fields close 

 to the village ; and in the wilder districts of Norway it was by no means un- 

 common in the trees by the roadside. It is not a shy bird, and frequently remains 

 for a very long time on the same twig, generally near the top of the tree, especially 

 in the evening, when its simple song harmonises with the melancholy stillness of 

 the outskirts of the country village. Throughout Europe it is a strictly migratory 

 bird ; in Greece and Asia Minor, where the season of the spring migration may be 

 said to be the months of March and April it ranks amongst the later migrants. 

 In South Holland the season of 1876 was a somewhat late one, and the arrival of 

 migratory birds began during the last week of March and ended during the last week 

 of May ; and it was not until the middle of the latter month that we heard the song 

 of the ortolan bunting. These birds leave Europe in September, arriving in North 

 Africa in large flocks. On their way south great numbers are caught in nets and 

 fattened for the table, and many are sent to this country alive from Holland and 



