208 CORN-BUNTING. 
Nubia, Arabia Petrzea, Bushire and Sind. In forest and mountain 
regions it is practically unknown. 
The Corn-Bunting is a late breeder, and in this country it is 
usually futile to search for its eggs before the latter part of May. 
The nest may often be found in rough herbage, or at the foot of a 
low shrub, but is generally placed well towards the middle of a field 
of clover, grass, or peas, or under a clod among young corn ; while 
some umbelliferous plant, sufficiently strong to afford a perch for 
the bird, will probably be at no great distance from it. Straw, a 
little moss, roots and dry grass, with hair for a lining, are the 
materials employed to form the somewhat loose structure ; the eggs, 
4-5 in number, are of a dull purplish-white, or sometimes ochreous, 
blotched and streaked with dark purple-brown: measurements 
‘98 in. by ‘7 in. The hen sits closely, whilst the male utters 
his harsh and monotonous /ic-tic-teese on a perch, which varies in 
elevation from the top of some tall tree or a hedgerow to a clod in 
the fallows. The flight is heavy and laboured, the legs of the bird 
hanging down at first, as if broken. The young are fed on insects ; 
the adults have been seen to eat cockchafers, and they undoubtedly 
devour numbers of small beetles ; but in autumn and winter grain 
is largely consumed, and the birds become so fat that, in the south 
of Europe, they are much in request for the table. Many are taken 
in nets, together with Larks, owing to their habit of roosting on the 
ground, and Booth says that near Shoreham numbers resort in the 
evening to the beds of marine weeds which grow on the mud-flats 
above high-water mark. 
The adult male has the lores, and a line above and behind the eye 
buffish-white ; ear-patches, head, neck, mantle and upper tail-coverts 
pale hair-brown, streaked with darker brown down¢he middle of each 
feather ; wing-coverts dark brown with buff margins; quills dusky- 
brown ; tail-feathers rather lighter brown with pale edges; throat 
buffish-white, with brown spots at the side which form a streak ; 
remaining under parts buffish-white, freely spotted on the breast and 
streaked on the flanks with brown ; bill yellowish-brown, with a dark 
stripe along the ridge of the upper mandible ; legs pale flesh-colour. 
Length 7 in. ; wing 3°6 in. The sexes are alike in plumage. The 
young bird is darker, with broad fulvous margins to the wing-coverts 
and secondaries, and the under parts are tinged with buff. Some 
Continental specimens—especially those from the east—are very pale 
in colour. Albinistic varieties are not uncommon. 
