72 The Goldfinch 



to a great cxteut upon aphides aud small green caterpillars : in confiueinent soft- 

 food answers the same purpose. 



As a cage and aviar^y bird the Goldfinch is a general favourite ; some avicnl- 

 turists admiring it (most unaccountably) for its energetic, though absurd song, 

 others for muling purposes, others again for its lovely plumage, and a few on 

 account of its capacity for learning the usual stupid tricks " violating the laws of 

 nature," as the editor of the 4th edition of Yarrell most aptly observes. 



As a cage-bird the Goldfinch is too restless to be pleasing ; he is on the 

 front wires half his time, and keeps jumping backwards aud forwards from perch 

 to wires almost incessanth^ vainly repeating a fragment of his song — '' c/iiivif, 

 ihh^'it, c/iiiviiy In an aviary everything is altered : he darts hither and thither 

 with undulating flight, poises on the top of, or hangs underneath a twig, or the 

 extremity of a spra}' of fir, picking out buds or leaves ; he squabbles with his 

 brothers in the bath or the seed-pan, fights furiously for possession of a wife, 

 and, having secured her, wages incessant warfare with all who dai^e approach her. 

 For a nesting-site he chooses a Hartz-cage hanging high upon the back of the 

 aviar}^, assists his wife with her first nest, and builds a second in another cage 

 whilst the young are still under her care ; such at any rate was my experience 

 in 1895 : four young were hatched in my first nest, of which three flew and were 

 brought up, being fed as usual from the crop, upon partly digested seed and the 

 soft food prepared for my insectivorous birds. 



After leaving the nest the mother-bird ceased to trouble about her j-oung, 

 but began to lay in the second nest almost immediatel}' ; the male bird now 

 having to undertake the double duty of feeding his first family and his wife. 

 About thirteen days later five 3'oung were hatched, and but for the playfulness 

 of the first family would doubtless have been reared ; but the j-oung ruffians 

 pulled them all out on the sand and left them there. Shortly afterwards the hen 

 put a fresh lining into her first nest and sat again upon a clutch of six eggs, all 

 of which she hatched ; unhappily all these, excepting the last one, which I put 

 under a Canary, shared the fate of their predecessors : even the sixth bird was 

 pkicked to death by its foster-mother. 



In 1896 my Goldfinches again built, quarrelling for bits of wadding, robbing 

 one anothers' nests, changing their minds as to the site of a nest, and pulling 

 the latter to pieces when completed ; eventually one hen laid two or three eggs 

 in a Canar^^'s nest, and the two mothers were so constantly disputing that, although 

 the j-oung were hatched, none were reared. After the autumn moult one of the 

 birds produced a golden instead of a crimson colour on the face ; but the Rev. 

 H. A. Macpherson told me that this was of common occurrence in captivit}'. 



