CORN BUNTING 
129 
may be sometimes heard very early in the year, 
but the bird is a late breeder, the latter part of 
May and June being the usual time to find the 
nest. It is placed on the ground in standing corn 
or other green crops, sometimes in rank herbage 
in the dykes or baulks which separate the fields 
in countries only partially enclosed, and sometimes 
at the foot of a small bush among similar tussocky 
vegetation. It is built of roots, dry stems, bents, 
and sometimes a little moss, and lined with dry 
grass and horse-hair, and is usually very well con- 
cealed. The eggs, generally four or five in number, 
have a strong family likeness to those of the Yellow 
Hammer and the other Buntings, but are generally 
a good deal larger, as well as easily distinguishable 
in colour and markings. They are dull, mottled 
purplish-white, or sometimes brownish-yellow, in 
ground-colour, very coarsely and heavily marked 
with deep purple-brown — sometimes almost black 
— streaks and blotches, which have more or less 
conspicuously the wavy, scribbled appearance which 
is characteristic of the eggs of all the British species 
of the family. In the yellowish variety the 
markings are often a tawny brown, instead of 
purple, and without the dark and heavy splashes. 
Both cock and hen bird are a dull mottled brown 
in colour, paler on the under parts. 
K 
