136 BRITISH BIRDS. 



together by an unbroken series and are geographically distributed in a 

 very irregular manner. The differences between these forms may be ex- 

 pressed as follows : — 



-a-.-, 1 f E. pyrrhuloides . Large and very pale. 



> T, -'^ , . , > intermediate m size and rutous. 



T..,, -,, f Jii. schcemclus. ) 



■ ( E. passerina. Small ; black and white. 



The difficulty of discontinuous areas of distribution may be overcome by 

 regarding the large-billed form as one race and the small-billed form as 

 another. The small-billed form will then range across the Palaearctic 

 Region, the larger rufous birds of the west meeting the smaller black-and- 

 white birds of the east in the valley of the Yenesay. The large-billed 

 form will be a resident in Italy, Turkey, the deltas of the Danube and 

 the Volga, Turkestan, the Altai Mountains and the Ussuri. Intermediate 

 forms between the two are found at each extreme limit of the range — in 

 Japan and in Spain, in the former country having exterminated both 

 extreme forms. A somewhat similar difference of colour to that we have 

 noticed in the small-billed form is also found in the large-billed form, and 

 shows the usual climatic variation — the eastern and western forms, where 

 the climate is humid, being rufous, and the central forms, where the climate 

 is comparatively dry, being pale. 



The haunts of this bird in summer are near water — either the reed- 

 grown willow-studded banks of sluggish rivers, the rushy sides of canals 

 and large or small marshes, or, in wilder country, the banks of litt!e 

 streams, drains by the roadside, and swampy moorland. The Reed-Bunt- 

 ing, although a local bird, is one that frequents marshy places in wild as 

 well as in cultivated districts, and seems as much at home in the roughest 

 parts of the Highlands as on the wide-stretching reedy broads in the low- 

 lying counties. The birds are usually seen in pairs in summer — each pair 

 apparently keeping to a recognized beat, from which they seldom stray 

 until the young are reared. The cock is a very pretty bird, and rarely 

 fails to arrest the attention as he either clings to some tall rush, or flitting 

 in jerking flight over the placid waters, perches on some overhanging spray 

 and pours out his simple little song. Sometimes he may be seen sitting 

 on walls or rocks, more frequently upon a scrubby bush or on the solitary 

 telegraph-wire stretching far away over the moors, or even on some tall 

 shrub of heather, in all which situations he repeatedly warbles his song. 

 It is a true Bunting^s song, very monotonous ; but very often his homely 

 strain, heard in places where sweeter music is absent, proves grateful to 

 the ear and imbues the wilderness with life. It consists of a double note 

 repeated three or four times and concluded with a long-drawn one, which 

 it seems to have considerable difiiculty in uttering, and which resembles 

 the note of the Corn-Bunting. Its call-note is a harsh and prolonged 



