Page:The Common Birds of Bombay.djvu/160

144 : they looked adversity in the face and began again. I hope they are at it still. That was ten years ago.

There are several near relations of the House Sparrow which have not attached themselves to man, like it, and one of them, the Yellow-throated Sparrow (Passer flavicollis), is common enough in Bombay. It is a more elegant and shapely bird than our house pest, but an unmistakeable Sparrow. Its colour is a pretty, uniform, pale ashy-brown, with a double white band on the wing and a touch of dark chestnut on the shoulder. The underparts are a little paler than the upper. It gets its name from a patch of pure yellow on the throat, but you must get near it to see that. It makes its nest during the hot season in any convenient hole, often outside, but never inside, of a house. The end of a hollow bamboo affords exactly the sort of accommodation it requires, for which reason you will find it haunting scaffoldings, plague huts, and other forms of temporary architecture. When the hen is on the eggs the cock sits within hearing and chirps by the hour with the true Sparrow accent. The eggs are usually three or four in number and of a greenish-white colour, thickly blotched and clouded with brown.

We have one Bunting which almost takes the place in India of the Yellow-hammer at home, swarming about fields and hedges and singing with more cheer than music. But it is with us only in the cold season, being a Greek, or Syro-Phœnician, by birth. On a careless view the Black-headed Bunting (Euspiza melanocephala) may pass for a Weaver Bird on account of its yellow front, but it is a larger and