Page:The Zoologist, 1st series, vol 1 (1843).djvu/331

Rh The Reed Sparrow or Reed Bunting. The reed bunting is not very common with us, but I have observed the good service which it does by destroying insects and small seeds. In autumn it will sometimes collect in flocks, and attack our outfields for a short time. Most of them migrate from Scotland in October, returning in March, but now and then a straggler will pass the whole season in our fields and stack-yards.

The Snowflake or Snow Bunting. The snow bunting is one of our winter visitants, arriving in October and departing in March. It haunts the uplands, as well as the cultivated grounds of the interior, but is most abundant on the sea-coast farms, gleaning in the stubbles for grain, seeds and insects. During severe weather it haunts their stack-yards, and in the interior it removes to the sea-coast.

The Skylark. This farm is about five miles from the sea, as the crow flies, and its elevation may vary from two hundred to two hundred and forty feet. During the last five years I have regularly observed our skylarks depart in December, and return about the beginning of February; last season a few stragglers remained behind the rest. I believe they proceed to the sea-coast farms, but of this I cannot speak positively, and am also unable to estimate their relative abundance there, during the dead season. Shortly after ther arrival they commence their loud rejoicing songs, which are heard all the season through, till hushed in sultry July; they are then silent for a season, till the end of September, when their happy strains again resound through the still autumn day, far above the din of rural labour and the Irish reaper's song. This bird is never seen clinging to the standing corn, nor sitting on the shocks, but when his downward flight is ended, in crouching attitude he partakes of the common feast for all that lives. Snow-storms may drive him from his haunts, a cowering suppliant for our bounty, modest and retiring, and contenting himself with such grains and seeds as lie scattered about the stacks, but no sooner is the snow swept from the fields than he joyfully reasserts his independence. The early beetle is his delight: the stirring of the soil, at almost all seasons, affords him a supply of choice insect food, of which he is so fond that I have seen individuals hobbling amongst the young twigs, on the top of a close-pruned hedge, intent on capturing crane-flies (Tipulidæ).