YELLOW HAMMER 
131 
summer weather, one bird succeeding another by 
the wayside almost with the regularity of the tele- 
graph posts. In many country districts the song 
is said to form the sentence, " A very, very little 
bit of bread, and no cheese ; its characteristics 
are a rapid repetition of a single note as far as 
" and," followed by " no," much higher and more 
emphatic, and a lengthy fall on ^* cheese " again. 
The general effect of the song is a little like the 
Chaffinches, though it is more plaintive in tone. 
As a rule, the nest is found on or close to the 
ground, in thorns and rough herbage, on a hedge- 
bank, or in the lower parts of the hedge itself ; 
sometimes, however, it is in a furze or other thick - 
leaved bush or tree, at a height of three or four 
feet from the ground. I have even found it in the 
outer twigs of a Scotch fir, at a height of twelve or 
fifteen feet ; but such a situation is extremely un- 
usual. It is rather irregular in shape, built of dry 
stems with a little moss or wool, and lined with 
horse-hair or fine fibrous roots. The eggs are 
usually four or five in number ; they are bluish or 
purplish-pink in ground colour, sometimes a little 
blotched and clouded with purplish-red, and plenti- 
fully marked with the long, scribbled, hair-like 
lines which have given this bird the local names 
of Scribbling or Writing Lark. There is con- 
siderably less yellow in the plumage of the hen 
K 2 
