210 FEINGILLID^. 



gether busUy occupied in picking up the seeds which had 

 fallen from the cones of a spruce fir. On one occasion a 

 nest was brought to me by a man who had found it built 

 on some twigs which grew from the trunk of a tall oak- 

 tree ; it was built of the tangled white lichens which grow 

 on trees, on a foundation of a few roots, and contained five 

 eggs. I afterwards discovered another nest of exactly 

 similar structure, which I believed must have been built 

 by the same bird, but it was empty. In Hertfordshire a 

 single Hawfinch visited my garden one winter for several 

 days in succession, and diligently picked up and cracked 

 the stones of laurel cherries, from which Blackbirds had, 

 a few months before, as busily stripped the pulp. In the 

 cherry orchards in the neighbourhood they are not un- 

 common, where, even if not seen, their visits are detected 

 by the ground being strewed with halves of cherry-stones, 

 which these birds split with their powerful beaks as cle- 

 verly as a workman with the chisel. Their note I have 

 never heard, but the proprietor of the orchards assured me 

 that he had often detected their presence by the low twit- 

 tering noise which they made, a description the truth of 

 which a writer quoted by Yarrell confirms. I have never 

 seen a nest in Hertfordshire, but on several occasions have 

 observed their eggs, among the collections made by the 

 country boys in the neighbourhood. Besides cherry-stones. 

 Hawfinches feed on hazelnuts, hornbeam seeds, the kernels 

 of the fruit of the hawthorn, seeds of various kinds, and, 

 when they can get them, green peas, for the sake of which 

 they often venture into gardens. A writer in the Maga- 

 zine of Zoology and Botany, vol. i., who has had many 

 opportunities of watching them, states that they usually 

 build their nests in trees at an elevation varying from 

 twenty-five to thirty feet, and that the nest is composed 

 of dead twigs, intermixed with pieces of grey lichen ; this 

 last material varying much in quantity in different nests, 

 but beincf never absent. 



