16 HANDBOOK OF BRITISH INLAND BIRDS 
visitor only, arriving in the great general contingent 
about the middle of April. It haunts rough, furzy 
commons, fields, and uplands, and is one of the 
birds which often find congenial quarters on the 
dry, half-overgrown slopes of a railway cutting or 
embankment. It is a handsome little bird, a trifle 
smaller than "the Sparrow in size, rich, deep, mottled 
brown above, and warm bufF on the breast and 
throat, with a bold, black patch on the cheek, and 
a white eye-stripe. When its own private territory 
is invaded it flits anxiously about, with a sharp, 
double note, from one watch-tower, or coign of 
vantage, to another, now perching on a jutting 
spray, now on a fence-rail, and often, in a very 
characteristic way, on some tall, dry dock-stem, or 
other branching plant, in the scrubby pastures it 
frequents. The nest is built in thick grass, furze, 
or scrub, on or very close to the ground, and is very 
difficult to find. Six eggs are usual ; they are deep 
greenish-blue, a good deal smaller than an ordinary 
Hedge-sparrow's, and a good deal greener and 
deeper in tint. Sometimes they are faintly freckled 
at the larger end with rusty red. In April and 
May the Whinchat has a very pleasing little song, 
sung both on the wing and when perching, but it is 
such an alert and anxious little bird when its nesting 
operations are forward that it is often difficult to 
hear anything of it but the clicking alarm-note. 
