In the case of another pair of birds, that had been robbed, I noticed that the male sang much upon the wing as he flew back and forth from tree to tree across an osier-grown clay pit.
This species was first discovered in Somersetshire, and has been found breeding in Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, and Cambridge.
It is a great pity that it should be so much persecuted by egg collectors, some of whom seem bent upon ruining its chances of ever becoming a regular British breeding species. To listen to the bird’s exquisite song for ten minutes is a far greater pleasure than to gaze for a month at its empty egg shells in a cabinet.
THE REED BUNTING.
The male Reed Bunting, or Reed Sparrow as it is frequently called, can hardly be mistaken for any other British bird on account of his conspicuous velvety black head and white collar running from the base of the bill down the sides of the neck some distance, and thence right round to the back of the head. His back is brownish-black, the feathers being broadly margined with reddish-brown and tawny grey; breast and under parts white, tinged and streaked with brown towards the sides. He is rather longer than the Common Sparrow, and shows a distinct white streak down either side of his tail when flying away from the observer.
His mate is smaller and has a brown instead of a black head.
Although certainly a singer, the Reed Bunting is not a great feathered musician, its song consisting of a few simple notes which the bird delivers with considerable persistency from the top of a reed or alder bush. It sounds like te, te, tu, te, diversified by an occasional discordant raytsh. Bechstein, the great German authority on cage birds, says that it is such an admirer of music that it will approach an instrument without fear, and testify to its joy by extending its wings and tail like a fan and shaking them.
The alarm cry is a sharp twitter, and when the male is afraid to approach the nest (either to take his turn in the labours of brooding or with food for the young) on account of some real or fancied danger, he persistently reiterates three melancholy notes that sound like “Don’t hit me.”