HEDGE-SPARROW 
55 
little bird, greenish-brown, with darker streaks 
above, and pale brown beneath, a little duskier 
about the throat and breast ; by close watching it 
may be seen jerking along, and often running 
almost Uke a mouse, among the dense herbage 
which it haunts, and occasionally rising to some 
more or less exposed spray to emit its curious, 
long-drawn song. It arrives towards the end of 
April, and nests late in May, and often later still. 
The nest is built in the thick of the long, tangled 
grass and tussocks, frequently at the end of a 
lengthy run or tunnel, and is extremely hard to 
come upon. Six eggs are usual ; they are pale, 
pinkish-white, thickly freckled with deep red- 
brown, the markings being often densest in a belt 
round the larger end. 
HEDGE-SPARROW. 
(^Accentor modularis.') 
Dunnock, Shufflewing, Hedge Accentor. — The 
Hedge-sparrow is one of the most familiar of all 
our British birds, with something about his quiet, 
retiring manners as he haunts the neighbourhood 
of our homes which makes him the very opposite 
of the pushing and self-assertive House-sparrow. 
He is, of course, no near relation of the Sparrow 
