THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF A YELLOW- HAMMER.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THS "SPECTATOR.1
SIR,—Everybody knows the yellowhammer. One cannot walk along a turnpike road, or on a common among gorse- bushes, or through narrow lanes without being reminded that if we behave ourselves we shall be rewarded with
"A little bit o' bread and no cheese," or, as the Scotch boys have it,
" Whetel-te, whetel-te wheel
Harry my nest, and the dell talc' ye."
They call him, also, the Devil bird, for the Devil is said to supply him with three drops of his blood every May morning:—
"Half a puddock, half a toad, Half a yellow yorling, Drinks a drap o' the dell's blnid Every May morning."
He is called L'6crivain in France, and in Shropshire the writing-master, on account of the irregular lines on the eggs.
The general character of the yellowhammer may be summed up in a few lines. He is cheerful and sociable, and will follow you from bush to bush, particularly if he is conscious that you are watching him, and admiring his pretty person and monotonous little song. He mingles freely with other birds, especially in the winter. He is quarrelsome and pugnacious. His sociability (as well as his quarrelsomeness) is well illus- trated in the following incident in the life of one of these adventurous little birds which came under my own observation. Walking across the common not long ago, one of us picked up a crippled yellowhammer. We thought at first that his wing was broken, but it proved to be not so bad as that. It was so injured, however, that he could not fly. We put him into a cage and fed him on canary-seed. When the wing was strong enough he was placed in an outdoor aviary with a number of canaries ; but as the birds had started housekeep- ing, and the yellowhammer was still awkward in his flight, be sometimes, perhaps unintentionally, flopped down on one or other of the nests, to the great trouble of the inmates ; so we
thought we were doing him a kindness by setting him free. The aviary door was of wire, and although it could not be opened from the inside, it was an easy matter to push it open about an inch from the outside. The yellowhammer
had found his new quarters very smooth and pleasant, with a good supply of food without the necessity of working for it. He did not care a fig for liberty, he preferred the pleasant prison-house ; so when all was quiet he returned to the aviary and managed to push his way into it. The next day fresh havoc was worked in the bird home, and several young and innocent canaries were flung from their nests ; so again he was turned out, and again he returned, with the same deplorable results. Lamentable to relate, on his third expulsion this heroic little bird was caught on the lawn (doubtless planning a fourth entry) by a naughty little dog, and killed like a malefactor in front of the aviary where he had been the cause of so much pain and unhappiness.—I am, Sir, 8co.,
R M.
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