

BIRDS 147 



favourite breeding-places, reappearing unexpectedly in unlooked- 

 for situations. In the neighbourhood of Allonby it has long been 

 abundant, for the last thirty years at any rate. Two or three 

 pairs nest annually near Carlisle, Tebay, Kendal, and some 

 other centres. It has often t cheered me by its simple droning 

 song uttered from a dock-weed, the top of a stone wall, or the 

 upper branches of a tall tree. I found it nesting on Walney 

 Island, at St. Bees, on Tyndal Fell, and in a good many other 

 scattered localities. It is well known as a spring and summer 

 visitant to the Alston valley, where it is popularly called the 

 ' Grass Bunting.' The Corn Bunting is not an early breeder. 

 In 1891 I saw more than a hundred individuals flying in com- 

 pany near Floriston as late as the 1 3th of May. 



YELLOW BUNTING. 



Emberiza citrinella, L. 



In the meadows round Ulpha, and elsewhere in the north of 

 Lancashire, the Yellowhammer occurs numerously, nesting in 

 the hedge-banks and in clumps of furze, upon the edge of mosses 

 and waste lands. It breeds so late that both eggs and young 

 are often found in the nest in September. It is as abundant in 

 the open country about St. Bees as in most parts of the interior 

 of this region. 



REED BUNTING. 



Emberiza schceniclus, L. 



I have never seen the Reed Bunting in Lakeland in the same 

 numbers that we used to meet with it on the eyots of the 

 Thames and its tributaries ten or eleven years ago. Yet it is 

 not at all an uncommon bird, either on our mosses or beside 

 the lesser water-courses and small pools of standing water, at 

 least in the summer-time. The Sark river is one of its most 

 cherished haunts. In the winter-time its presence with us is 

 sufficiently familiar at the water-side, but not to the same extent 

 on the coast. I noticed about a score of Eeed Buntings flitting 

 along the beach near Allonby in January 1890, but smaller 

 parties are more frequently seen. 



