Читать книгу The Times A Year in Nature Notes - Derwent May - Страница 77

TWO KINDS OF bunting are singing in farmland hedges. Yellowhammers, or yellow buntings, now have the primrose-yellow heads of their summer plumage and are singing intermittently about a ‘little bit of bread and no cheese’, as their song has long been thought to say. More prosaically, the song is a buzz followed by a long wheezy note – the ‘cheese’, which actually is often missing (literally no cheese.) Corn buntings are sturdier, duller birds, and when they fly from bush to bush they let their legs hang down. They have a far-carrying song, a sort of jangling trill like a bunch of keys being rattled.

Cranes are rare in England, but are sometimes seen at this time of the year, anywhere from Gloucestershire to the Scottish Highlands. Unmistakable birds, they are taller than a heron, with long legs and a long neck. They are mostly grey; their heads are black, white and red, and the tail is a bustle of drooping feathers. When they fly, they stretch their necks forward, unlike a heron, and trail their legs behind. These passing birds are probably migrants already heading for northern Europe. One or two pairs nest each year in Norfolk.