Page:The Zoologist, 1st series, vol 1 (1843).djvu/330

302 make this statement, to vindicate the character of Mr. Knapp, whose work I have ever held in high esteem. In the Lothians, and 1 believe throughout Scotland, grain crops are invariably bound into sheaves. With us the sickle is almost universally used, and with a little care on the part of the reaper, few heads are thrown into the end of the sheaf. After the breeding season is over the buntings keep together, in small parties, till the following spring.

The Yellow Hammer or Yellow Bunting. With us, the yellow bunting is essentially the bird of the cultivated farm. He is never seen on our wild moors, and the waving woods have no charm for him; no other bird can dispute his claim to the title. Like our other little granivorous birds they associate in flocks, to search the stubbles, and when these fail they adjourn to-the onsteads, helping themselves to grain and seeds wherever they can be found. At oat-seed time they may again be seen in the fields, and, along with other birds, claim the uncovered grains as their lawful prize. They commence their monotonous song about the middle of February; they and the chaffinches are our chief songsters during the latter snow-storms; the former do not cease till the second week in August, the last of all are the granivorous species, the corn bunting perhaps excepted. Even after they have dispersed to their several breeding-places, many individuals may be daily seen about the onstead, feeding on grain and small seeds, but at this season they chiefly subsist on insects, particularly Coleoptera; their young ones are largely supplied with crane-flies, (Tipulidæ). When assembled in considerable bands, before the commencement of harvest, they often injure fields of oats and wheat to a considerable extent, confining their depredations to the immediate neighbourhood of the hedge-row. In reference to their winter depredations on stacks, Mr. Wood, in his ' British Song-Birds,' page 300, says, "they (the yellow buntings) can obtain the object of their search from the very heart of the stack, by pulling out the long straws one by one." From this we must infer that the Staffordshire stacks are very small, and that the same slovenly style of agriculture prevails there as in Gloucestershire; but in our stacks the sheaves are always laid horizontally, or very nearly so, in concentric circles, except a few in the centre, on the ground, and on the top to finish off the structure, which soon becomes so firm that it requires a stout pull to draw out a single straw, and the chances are always ten to one that not a single grain is left by the friction on the spike or panicle, as the case may be.