30 Birds I Have Kept. 



first of a greenish grey; some yellow tints, however, may 

 already be seen in the male. 



The Greenfinch is a very familiar bird, congregating round 

 the house in winter with the Sparrows and Eobins, and fear- 

 lessly building in the garden, even close up to the windows. 

 In the playground of the school I attended there were a 

 number of young lime-trees ftilleulj, the tops of which had 

 been cut off during the winter, and in several of these, as 

 soon as the young branches had sprouted out in spring, some 

 Greenfinches built their nests, with misplaced confidence, how- 

 ever, for the boys invariably stole the eggs and sucked them. 



The Greenfinch has usually two, sometimes three, broods 

 in the season; the eggs, which are bluish white spotted with 

 violet and brown, chiefly at the larger end, are four or five 

 in number, and as I have already stated, can scarcely be 

 distinguished from those of a Canary; with which bird the 

 Greenfinch yill very readily pair, producing fine strong, healthy 

 and handsome birds, partaking of the appearance of both 

 parents: these hybrids are said to be capable of reproducing 

 their kind, a statement which I have not tried to verify. 



Hand-reared Greenfinches will breed in an aviary, or even 

 in a cage, among themselves and with all the other Finches. 



"When wild these birds feed on all sorts of seeds, and 

 should the supply of this, their natural diet, get short, they 

 will eat the buds of many kinds of trees, as well as the 

 tender sprouting corn. In the house they are not more par- 

 ticular, no seed, even hemp, seeming to come amiss to them, 

 or to do them any harm. 



The young are easily reared on bread-crumbs, or buckwheat 

 flour, and soon get very tame. Bechstein gives the following 

 directions for teaching them to fly out and return: — 



''After having taken the young from the nest, they must 

 be put in a cage, and placed at the foot of the tree in which 

 the nest is built, in a place dug for the purpose, and on the 

 cage a tit as a decoy. AVhen left there, the old birds come 



