Of these singers the goldfinch was the most pleasing. The bird that sang near me had assisted in rearing a brood in a nest on a low branch a few yards away, but {250} he still returned from the fields at intervals to sing; and seen, as I now saw him a dozen times a day, perched among the lime leaves and blossoms at the end of a slender bough, in his black and gold and crimson livery, he was by far the prettiest of my feathered visitors. [Sidenote: Cirl bunting] But the cirl bunting, the inferior singer, interested me most, for I am somewhat partial to the buntings, and he is the best of them, and the one I knew least about from personal observation. On my way hither at the end of June, somewhere between Romsey and Winchester, a cock cirl bunting in fine plumage flew up before me and perched on the wire of a roadside fence. It was a welcome encounter, and, alighting, I stood for some time watching him. I did not know that I was in a district where this pretty species is more numerous than in any other place in England--as common, in fact, as the universal yellowhammer, and commoner than the more local corn-bunting. Here in July and August, in the course of an afternoon's walk, in any place where there are trees and grass fields, one can count on hearing half a dozen birds sing, every one of them probably the parent of a nestful of young. For this is the cirl bunting's pleasant habit. He assists in feeding and safeguarding the young, even as other songsters do who cease singing when this burden is laid upon them; but he is a bird of placid disposition, and takes his task more quietly than most; and, after returning from the fields with several grasshoppers in his throat and {251} beak and feeding his fledglings, he takes a rest, and at intervals in the day flies to his favourite tree, and repeats his blithe little song half a dozen times.