8 COMMON BIRDS OF THE YANGTZE DELTA. 



weather. I counted four at one time on Mr. Du Bose's 

 lawn, looking for insects in a drizzling rain, one day last 

 spring. The other four robins are so rarely seen that we 

 need not take them up. 



Even our common sparrow here is not the house 

 sparrow, or English sparrow, as we call him at home, but 

 another quite differen,t. He is the mountain or tree sparrow 

 (Passer montanus), the mo tsiah of the Chinese. He is 

 neither so noisy nor so quarrelsome as his English cousin, 

 and his colouration is remarkable, for a sparrow, in that both 

 sexes are just alike. In general his habits here are about 

 the same, though in India he is quite different, being confined 

 almost entirely to the mountains whilst the English sparrow 

 takes the plains. In Eastern China the tree sparrow has 

 sole possession except for the few ruddy sparrows found on 

 the tops of the mountains. * 



The buntings are a large family of little birds closely 

 allied to the sparrows, and differ;ing from them chiefly in 

 having the lower mandible (i.e. under part of bill) larger 

 than the upper — a sort of "jimber-jawed" effect. Of fourteen 

 species listed for the lower Yangtze the two most often seen 

 are the greyheaded bunting (Emberiza Spodocephala) and 

 the yellow-breasted bunting {Einbjeriza aureola). 



The grey-headed bunting spends the winter with us 

 and makes himself very much at home; he will come right 

 to the doorstep, and readily accepts any crumbs or seeds 

 that are tossed to him. His head, neck, and upper breast are 

 a dark greenish grey, the upper parts of the body are rusty- 

 brown, yellow, and black — just "sparrow colour" as some one 

 has called it. Underneath he is sulphur yellow, and his 

 outer tail quills are white. In spring just before leaving, he 

 well repays all hospitality shown him, by a delightfully sweet 

 and varied song, with which he seems fairly to bubble over 

 from morning till night. 



The yellow breasted buntings, or wong tsiah, spend 

 only about a month with us in passing in autumn and spring, 

 but they come in such large numbers that we cannot fail to see 

 them. Every year thousands are netted and sold for a few 

 cash, as pets, and for several weeks each autumn half of the 

 Jittle boys on the street have them caged or tethered to a 

 string. Very few survive in captivity, and when they do 

 make but poor pets, as they have little song and not much 

 beauty. The whole upper plumage is much like the grey- 

 headed bunting's, except that the distinctive grey head is 

 lacking. The whole under parts are golden rather than 

 sulphur yellow, and the eyebrows are the same colour. 

 The males have in addition two white bars on the wings, 

 and in colours are generally brighter than the female. In 



