CHAPTER IX. 
THE YELLOW-HAMMER 
(Emberiza citrinella). 
“ Five eggs, pen-scribbled o’er with ink their shells, 
Resembling writing-scrolls, which Fancy reads 
As Nature’s poesy and pastoral spells— 
They are the Yellow-hammer’s, and she dwells, 
Most poet-like, ’mid brooks and flowery weeds.” 
John Clare. 
Man’s true companion in the winter-time,—the harm¬ 
less beggar who, when the snow has laid her spotless 
cloth outside, comes and begs for food in our farm-yard, 
is the Yellow-hammer; too well known by all inhabitants 
of towns and villages to render any but a cursory descrip¬ 
tion necessary. 
This bird is somewhat larger, or rather slimmer and 
longer in build than the House Sparrow, namely, seven 
inches in length by eleven and a half in breadth across 
the wings. Were the Yellow-hammer not so common, it 
would be regarded as a bird of brilliant plumage: its 
colouring is a bright golden-yellow, striped with red, 
gray, green, brown, and blackish lines; it is also spotted 
and blotched, and the male, especially, is brightly and 
strikingly marked. This bird is the representative of a 
rather numerous genus, which is clearly distinguishable 
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