gH A MiDLAUD village: railway and woodland. 



developed. Fot the chat, wMeh is simply (as I believe) an 

 alarm-note, is produced by a violent snapping of the bill, to 

 which the requisite force is given by a jerk of the whole body 

 including the tail. Anyone can verify this for himself by getting 

 close to one of these birds, and watching his action with a glass. 



If I walk alongade of the railway, as it passes beiweea ttie 

 water-meadows and the corn-fields which lie above them, di- 

 vided on each side from these by a low-lying withy-bed, I always 

 keep an eye upon the telegraph-wires ahead, knowing by long 

 experience that they will tell me what bir^ are breeding or have 

 bred about here. As autumn approaches, grea/t numbers indeed 

 of visitors. Swallows, Martins, Linnets, and others^ will come and 

 sun themselves here, and even tempt a Spai'row-hawk or Kestrel 

 to beat up and down the line ; but in early summer, beside the 

 Whin-chats, and the Whitethroats nesting in great numbers in 

 the thick quickset hedges which border the line, it is chiefly the 

 melancholy tribe of Buntings that will attract my notice. 



I ttust my friends the Buntings will not take ofenee at being 

 called melancholy ; I cannot retrapt the word, except in what is 

 now called ' a parliamentary sense.' I have just been looking 

 through a series of plates and descriptions of all the Buntings of 

 Europe, and in almost every one of them I see the same deflected 

 tail and listless attitude, and read of the same monotonous and 

 continually repeated note. The Buntings form in fact, though apt 

 ,to be confused with one another owing to their very strong family 

 likeness, perhaps the tnost clearly-marked and idiosyncratic 

 genuB among the whole range of our smaller birds. This may 

 be very easify illustrated from our three common English species. 



