BROWN BIRDS WITH SPOTTED BREASTS. 87 



CORN-BUNTING.— Plate 36. Length, 7 inches. 

 Upper parts light brown, with dark central streaks to 

 the feathers ; wing-feathers brown, with paler edgings ; 

 tail-feathers almost uniform brown ; under parts dull 

 white, with dark spots and streaks ; bill conical. 

 Resident. 



Eggs. — 4—5, pale buff or gray in the ground, 

 suffused with purplish-brown, and boldly blotched and 

 streaked with medium and dark reddish - brown ; 

 I'O X -7 inch (plate 124). 



Nest. — Loosely made of straw, dry grass, and root- 

 fibres, lined with hair, and placed well out in fields of 

 corn, grass, or clover. 



Distribution. — Local throughout the British Isles. 



The Corn-Bunting is the largest of our Buntings 

 — a lethargic, droop-tail community. As there is 

 nothing distinctive in his appearance, he is to be 

 identified rather by his habits and song. He sits 

 inertly for hours together upon a hedge-top, a branch 

 (preferably a bare one), or on a telegraph wire, utter- 

 ing at leisurely intervals, without effort or gesture of 

 any kind, a never-varying song. After three or four 

 stuttering notes exactly resembling one another, there 

 follows a peculiar long-drawn note that has been 

 likened to the jingling of a chain or to the sound of 

 breaking glass. There are probably only three long- 

 drawn notes with which it might be confounded — the 

 sustained whistle of a Starling, which, being a true 

 whistle, resembles it in no way but its length ; 

 the ' scream ' of the Greenfinch, which, however, lacks 

 introductory notes ; and the long, terminal note in the 

 song of the Yellowhammer. But this last, though 



