The song is not quite accurately described in the standard ornithological works as exactly like that of the yellowhammer, only without the thin, drawn-out note at the end, and therefore inferior--the little bit of bread, but without the cheese. It certainly resembles the yellowhammer's song, being a short note, a musical chirp, rapidly repeated several times. But the yellowhammer varies his song as to its time, the notes being sometimes fast and sometimes slow. The cirl's song is always the same in this respect, and is always a more rapid song than that of the other species. So rapid is it that, heard at a distance, it acquires almost the character of a long trill. In quality, too, it is the better song--clearer, brighter, brisker--and it carries farther; on still mornings I could hear one bird's song very distinctly at a distance of two hundred and fifty yards. The only good description of the cirl bunting's song--as well as the best general account of the bird's habits--which I have found, is in J. C. Bellamy's _Natural History of South Devon_ (Plymouth and London), 1839, probably a forgotten book. The best singer among the British buntings, he is also to my mind the prettiest bird. When he is described as black and brown, and lemon and sulphur-yellow, and olive and lavender-grey, and chestnut-red, we are apt to think that the effect of so many colours thrown upon his small body cannot be very {252} pleasing. But it is not so; these various colours are so harmoniously disposed, and have, in the lighter and brighter hues in the living bird, such a flower-like freshness and delicacy, that the effect is really charming. When, in June, I first visited the cottage, my host took me into his dressing-room, and from it we watched a pair of cirl buntings bring food to their young in a nest in a small cypress standing just five yards from the window. The young birds were in the pinfeather stage, but they were unfortunately taken a very few days later by a rat, or stoat, or by that winged nest-robber the jackdaw, whose small cunning grey eyes are able to see into so many hidden things. The birds themselves did not grieve overlong at their loss: the day after the nest was robbed the cock was heard singing--and he continued to sing every day from his favourite tree, an old black poplar growing outside the sweetbriar hedge in front of the cottage. About this bird of a brave and cheerful disposition, more will have to be said in the next chapter. It is, or was, my desire to describe events in the valley at this changeful period from late July to October in the order of their occurrence, but in all the rest of the present chapter, which will be given to the river birds exclusively, the order must be broken. [Sidenote: Water-birds]