Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1906 edition. Excerpt: ...The eggs are also purplish-pink, with black streaks and scribblings; they are often rather shorter, rounder, and more flat-topped in shape than a typical Yellow Hammer's, and with coarser and thicker markings, but these differences are not sufficiently pronounced to give a certain means of identification without a view of the parent bird. This is a resident species, and nests during May, June, and July. It is a bird which is particularly fond of the fringes of the chalk hills. REED BUNTING. Emberiza schoeniclus.) Reed Sparrow, Black-headed Bunting. The true Black-headed Bunting, however, is a bird of South-eastern Europe which has been seen less than half-a-dozen times in Britain altogether.--The Reed Bunting is the water-loving species of the family, and is not likely to escape observation by any of the sedgy-pool and stream-sides which it haunts. The cock is a conspicuous bird in every way, with his black crown and cheeks, big black patch on the throat and breast, white collar and mouth-stripe, and back, wings and tail of conspicuously mottled brown. He is fond of clinging to some tall osier stem or other marshy growth, and grating out his loud stammering call, more varied and broken than that of the Corn Bunting, and ending with a sort of sibilant or hissing note. The hen bird is marked less noticeably; she is mainly mottled reddish-brown, with the black and white markings about the head and throat much more mixed and indistinct. Though resident in this country as a species, the Reed Bunting shifts its ground a good deal in the winter, and the black patches of the cock's plumage are then replaced by duller brown. As spring arrives many of the Reed Buntings leave the larger bodies of water and disperse into their breeding-places, where...