36 
The Cirl Bnnt'oig. 
at once, if we had been in the neighbourhood Ijefore, to some 
liedgerow where I remembered seeint,-- a Cirl Bunting before, 
and was ahnost certain to see one or two in the old place. I 
know no other bird that seems to wander about so little. 
lliere appear to lie more male Cirl Buntings than female; 
partly, I suppose, because the cock is a handsome and bold bird 
and the hen is less conspicuous and more shy. Again, in the 
s[)ring, while the hen is incubating, the cock is fond of perehing 
on some high twig in the hedge near where its nest is and 
spending hours together in the truly bunting habit of doing 
nothing. All the Buntings appear to have this habit of sitting 
stolidly for hours together like a yokel with his hands in his 
pockets. 
It has not been my fortune to tind many Cirl Buntings" 
iiests; but one I found on May f)th, in the garden of the 
Chateau at liersin Coui)igny was low down in a gooseberry 
ljush and contained three eggs; next day the hen was sitting on 
four eggs, and the cock had taken up a ])osition among the bare 
twigs in the to[) of a small tree and kept up an almost continuous 
trilling. While trilling his monotonous song his head looks 
ui)wards, and is ke])t moving from one side to the other and his 
bill is ojien, and he has that rather sly side-long expression that 
the crossbill has. 
The similarity of birds' notes always interests me, and I think 
that it is often very cHfilicult to distinguish at first the note of the 
C irl Bunting from that of the Lesser Whitethroat ; in fact, when 
the bird cannot be seen, the position will almost always tell which 
bird is singing, as the Cirl seldom sings except when high up off 
the ground, while the Lesser Whitethroat loves to sing while 
hopping and creei)ing about in a low thick hedge or overgrown 
ditch. 
The habit of turning the head from side to side while 
singing is noticeable in several birds besides the Cirl Bunting; 
for example, the common Linnet and the (irasshopper 
Warbler. In the books one reads that the ventriloquist effect 
of the reeling of the Grasshopper Warbler is due to its habit of 
moving" its head from side to side, but the two other birds I have 
mentioned do exactly the same without the ventriloquist effect. 
