70 



British Cage Birds. 



looking most anxious and -uncomfortable the while. This 

 peculiarity seems natural to these birds, for they practise it 

 whenever they are at all excited, either by pleasure or anger. 



Yellow Buntings breed twice, and sometimes three times, 

 in a year, between April and July. The nest is always 

 built low, and frequently on the ground, at the side of a 

 river, bourne, or brook, or at the bottom or side of a 

 bank; a favourite place is the side of a railway embank- 

 ment, in a quite secluded place, and near the bottom of it, 

 where the grass is high and abundant. It is composed 

 of hay, dried grass, weeds, and moss, and is very plentifully 

 lined with horsehair, more so, perhaps, than that of any other 

 bird. It is a rather large, flattish construction, tolerably 

 well put together. The hen lays from four to seven eggs, 

 greyish white in colour, and veined and spotted with blackish 

 brown spots and marks. She incubates fourteen days. Both 

 parents feed the young, principally with insects, until they 

 are nearly fledged, when they sometimes give them seeds. 



Yellow Buntings sometimes attempt to breed in confinement, 

 and possibly might do so if reared by hand and moulted 

 in cages or aviaries. 



Methods of Capture. — Yellow Buntings may be taken, 

 in winter, with the clap net, or with the decoy bush. They 

 may also be ensnared by the noose line — that is, a line made 

 of a piece of stout twine, on which a lot of horsehair nooses 

 have been securely tied on each side, about Gin. apart from 

 each other, and pegged down close to the ground, with a 

 few oats or grains of hemp seed sprinkled beneath and around 

 them. These birds are not at all difficult to capture. 



Food and Treatment. — The principal food partaken of 

 by Yellow Buntings, when in a wild state, is insects of various 

 kinds, caterpillars, worms, &c. They are partial to ants' 

 eggs, and are constantly on the hunt for them in summer 

 time ; and so eager are the birds to devour these, that quan- 

 tities of earth are swallowed along with the eggs. When 

 insect food becomes scarce. Yellow Buntings have recourse to 

 various kinds of wild seeds, the same as are eaten by 

 Finches. They will eat wheat and oats, and appear espe- 

 cially fond of the latter. In confinement, they eat canary, 

 rape, millet, maw, hemp, and lin seed indiscriminately, and are 

 passionately fond of groats. They will eat with avidity the 



