You can imitate it by tightly pressing a handful of polished pebbles together, which produce, as they slide over each other, a variety of sharp and scraping sounds. It is a peculiarity of the song that it is like several sounds emitted simultaneously, as of a note broken up into splinters, or issuing from a bundle of minute windpipes instead of out of one of larger size. Of all the birds that remain with us throughout the year, the bunting is the latest to breed, the nest being usually built in May. It is placed among grass and herbage close to the ground, and formed of dry grass and fibrous roots, lined with horsehair and fine fibres. Four to six eggs are laid, dull purplish white or pale yellowish in ground-colour, blotched and streaked with dark brown, with some patches of a dull lavender hue. The bunting feeds on seeds and grain and insects. In autumn it becomes gregarious, and visits the stubbles and rickyards, where it is seen associating with sparrows, greenfinches, and chaffinches. Yellowhammer. Emberiza citrinella. [Illustration: FIG. 51.--YELLOWHAMMER. ⅓ natural size.] Head, neck, breast, and under parts bright yellow, more or less streaked with dusky; flanks streaked with brownish red; upper parts reddish brown spotted with dusky. _Female_: the yellow parts less bright, and spotted with dull reddish brown. Length, six and a quarter inches. * * * * * The yellowhammer, or yellow bunting, is one of the most generally diffused species in the British Islands, and, on account of its habit of always perching on the summit of a bush or other elevation, and of its bright yellow head and neck, which make it conspicuous at a distance, it is a familiar object to every person in the rural districts. It differs from the corn-bunting both in a brighter colouring and in a slimmer and more graceful figure. But it is a heavy bird nevertheless, of a sedentary disposition, and during the warm season spends a great portion of its time in sitting upright and motionless on its perch, uttering its song at regular intervals.