58 The Bullfinch 



cause of tlie melauisni, whicli may have been due to keeping the birds in a 

 moist warm atmosphere. 



During the summer months the Bullfinch chief!}' haunts the outskirts of woods, 

 plantations, dense shrubberies, private pleasure grounds, where clumps of conifers 

 with tangled undergrowth of brambles have been left, to vary the landscape or to 

 form cover for game, or clearings covered with two or three year's growth ; less 

 frequentl}" lanes skirted b}- tall hedges ; but never far from woods. In such places 

 it builds its shallow nest, and once I found one in a loose wa3-side hazel-hedge, 

 about three feet high and quite at the top, barely concealed b}' a leaf. 



The favourite site for the nest is on the iipper surface of a lunnzontal branch 

 of a spruce-fir, or j-ew ; but I have also met with it in dwarf hawthorns tangled 

 with blackberr}' vines, and in the side of a hawthorn, half buried by elm-foliage, 

 on the edge of a wood : sometimes a small box-tree is selected, or very rarely a 

 slight gap in a tall hedge. The outer framework of the nest consists of a tangled 

 platform of slender twigs or roots, surrounding a neat, and sometimes stoutly 

 built, but usually somewhat frail looking cup of plaited rootlets and bents, with 

 a lining of root-fibre and black horse-hairs. According to Seebohm "in some 

 nests a little wool or a feather or two are found," but I never found either, 

 though occasionally a dead leaf drifts into the ci:p and is left there. The eggs 

 number from four to six, but rarely exceed five ; in colour they ai^e pale blue, 

 sometimes almost white ; spotted with blackish-brown, mixed with spots or blotches 

 of purplish, red-brown, and now and then lavender; most eggs are chiefly spotted 

 at or near the larger end ; sometimes there are one or two Bunting markings 

 among the spots ; rarel}' the zone of markings occurs near the smaller end of the 

 egg ; and lastly, in the very aberrant, almost white variety, the whole of the 

 spots are chocolate-brown diffused at the edges. 



There is no doubt that, when feeding its young, the Bullfinch eats aphides, 

 small green caterpillars, seeds, and leaves of weeds ; so that, in a measure, it 

 atones for the mischief wdiich it does to the fruit-grower in autumn and spring. 



It is said that the Bullfinch frequently rears two broods in the season ; its 

 first eggs being laid towards the end of April ; the young would, therefore, be 

 hatched early in May, and perhaps be able to look after themselves by the end 

 of that month ; the second nest, if built in the last week of May, would again 

 have eggs by the end of the first \veek in June. My own experience is that, in 

 Kent, nidificatiou is later ; the first nest having eggs in the early part of May, 

 and the second early in Jul}^ so that the old birds must be close upon, or in 

 their moult by the time that the young leave the nest. Is it certain that these 

 birds would be reared? I am inclined to doubt it. In 1890 a pair of Bullfinches 



