414 
PERCHING BIRDS. 
was sufficiently tame to take insects from the hand, showing a great partiality to 
such a repast, and, when let out of the cage, catching flies in the windows. The 
cirl bunting bears some resemblance to the yellow bunting in plumage, but the 
male is readily distinguished by the fact that the head and nape are olive-green, 
and the rump and upper tail-coverts olive-green streaked with dusky; while a 
bright stripe extends over the eye, and another below it. The wings and tail are 
similar to those of the yellow bunting, but the lesser wing-coverts are olive-green 
instead of chestnut. The throat is dull black, below which is a broad patch of 
yellow, and a zone of olive-green extends across the breast, shading into chestnut. 
The female cirl bunting can always be distinguished from the female yellow bunting 
by the head never showing any trace of yellow, the under-parts being not so 
bright a yellow; while the rump and upper tail-coverts are olive instead of 
chestnut. 
The far-famed ortolan ( E. hortulana), shown in the upper figure 
’ on p. 410, for which fabulous prices were sometimes paid by the 
epicures of the last century, is a near relative of the cirl bunting; and, like that 
species, is more common in Southern Europe than further north. The tameness 
of the ortolan buntings outside the city of Pampeluna, in Spain, is almost ludicrous. 
So little do they apprehend injury, that they will allow visitors to lie on the grass 
while they forage round for earth-worms; these birds feeding partly on grass seeds 
and partly on worms. The ortolan bunting often resorts to the edges of thickets 
and the skirts of fir-woods; and its song somewhat resembles that of the yellow 
bunting. In Sweden the ortolan sings both during the day and throughout the 
light nights of the Arctic summer. The nests, which are invariably placed upon 
the ground, and generally in the open fields, are built of dry grass or roots, 
and lined with fine fibres or hair. The eggs vary in ground-colour from bluish 
white to pale salmon colour, spotted and blotched with rich purple-brown. Mr. 
Seebolnn observes that “ it is somewhat remarkable that a bird so common on 
the Continent, and all the countries adjacent to the British Islands, should be so 
rare in Britain. I found the ortolan bunting breeding on the mountains in the pine 
regions both of Greece and Asia Minor. When I was at Valconswaarcls we con¬ 
stantly heard its plaintive, monotonous song as it sat perched for a long time on 
the branch of a tree, in the lanes or in the hedges that surrounded the fields close 
to the village; and in the wilder districts of Norway it was by no means un¬ 
common in the trees by the roadside. It is not a shy bird, and frequently remains 
for a very long time on the same twig, generally near the top of the tree, especially 
in the evening, when its simple song harmonises with the melancholy stillness of 
the outskirts of the country village. Throughout Europe it is a strictly migratory 
bird; in Greece and Asia Minor, where the season of the spring migration may be 
said to be the months of March and April it ranks amongst the later migrants. 
In South Holland the season of 1876 was a somewhat late one, and the arrival of 
migratory birds began during the last week of March and ended during the last week 
of May; and it was not until the middle of the latter month that we heard the song 
of the ortolan bunting. These birds leave Europe in September, arriving in North 
Africa in large flocks. On their way south great numbers are caught in nets and 
fattened for the table, and many are sent to this country alive from Holland and 
