192 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 237 part i 



in its haunts can remember a "brambling-summer." On the other 

 hand, the species can be disappointingly scarce even in districts where 

 it is normally well represented. In his account of the fauna of East 

 Finmark, Schaanning (1907) noted that in one year not a single pair 

 of bramblings could be found nesting in a wide stretch of forest 

 where three summers before the birds had been abundant. 



Spring. — A few migrating bramblings have been seen in February 

 as far north as the Faroes, but the spring passage does not normally 

 become evident anywhere in western Europe until well into March, and 

 reaches its height in April. At some time in the latter month, 

 bramblings appear in the birch woods along the coasts of Norway — 

 the first summer haunts to be reoccupied. Large flocks alight in 

 arctic Finno-Scandia a week or two later, in the second half of May, 

 when the vernal immigration into the Russian forests may be expected. 



Little has been recorded of the courtship display of the brambling 

 beyond that it does not differ much from that of the closely allied 

 chaffinch {Fringilla coelebs). No sooner have the retm-ning flocks 

 dispersed than the females may be seen darting through the forest, 

 each with her mate in close piKsuit. When at length she alights, he 

 settles close by, to spread his tail and flutter his drooping wings, just 

 as would a city sparrow. It is then, as he flits by the white-trunked 

 birches, that a male brambling appears at his best; the glossy blue- 

 black feathers of his head and mantle offsetting the snowy-white rump 

 and the chestnut shoulder patches. 



While bramblings are generally common enough in mixed forest, 

 their strongholds are those lovely northern woods where the graceful 

 birch predominates above other trees. Though these finches cannot 

 be described as colonial in the narrowest sense of the word, several 

 pairs may often be found within a small compass. Their neighbors 

 at times include a varying number of fieldfares (Turdus pilaris), and 

 no one who has watched a party of the big thrushes hustling a crow 

 or hawk can doubt that the association benefits the smaller birds. 

 Frequently also a pair of merlins (Falco columharius) will take up 

 their quarters close by. As under such circumstances the little falcons 

 hunt at some distance from their home, their presence — so far from 

 being a menace — affords further security to the finches and thrushes 

 around them. 



Bramblings breed right up to the tree line — in some districts, well 

 beyond the outskirts of the forests proper. It is amongst such smTOund- 

 ings that scattered pairs are to be found in the extreme north of Norway 

 and Finland. Both writers recall laborious, yet ever pleasant, quests 

 for these and other bu'ds' nests in a wilderness of scrub around Vadso. 

 One particularly lovely brambling clutch was found there, but only 

 after struggUng thi^ough dense thickets of low sallows and stunted 



