178 



ON THE MORE IMPORTANT ADDITIONS TO OUR 

 KNOWLEDGE OF BRITISH BIRDS SINCE 1899. 



BY 



H. F. WITHERBY and N. F. TICEHURST. 

 Part V. 



(Co7itinued from page 152.) 



GOLDFINCH Carduelis eleyans Stephens. S. page 173. 



Writing in 1899 Mr. Saunders stated that the Groldfinch had 

 undoubtedly decreased, in numbers during the previous half 

 century in England, while beyond the border it had almost 

 disappeared from the Lothians, but was again on the increase 

 in the Sol way district, though still very scarce beyond the 

 Oreat Glen. In 1903 Mr. Harvie- Brown drew up a valuable 

 summary of the status of this bird as revealed by the various 

 county faunas published to the year 1894 (Zoologist, 1903, pp. 

 23-26), with a view to eliciting information as to its pi*esent 

 status. In this he was fairly successful, and a good deal of 

 useful information was subsequently published, but the authors 

 were not always careful to distinguish between the numbers of 

 the breeding birds and the migratory flocks. 



In Mr. Harvie-Brown's summary this decrease of the species 

 was almost universally manifest throughout England, with the 

 exception of an increase that had been noted in the neighbour- 

 hood of London in 1893, and in Dorset between 1880 and 1887. 

 In the west the decrease does not seem to have been so marked, 

 as the bird was fairly plentiful in Hereford up to 1888, and 

 common in many parts of Wales in 1893. During the last seven 

 or eight years there has undoubtedly been an increase all over 

 the country at the time of the autumn migration ; but informa- 

 tion as to the breeding stock in many districts is still required, 

 though such data as are available seem to indicate that the bird 

 is really recovering from its lately depleted condition in most 

 counties. The past decrease of the Goldfinch has been ascribed 

 by vai'ious authors to several different causes, among which may 

 be mentioned high farming and the reclamation of waste lands, 

 the depredations of bird-catchers, and the severe winters of the 

 last half of the past century. Where an increase has been noted 

 it is almost univei-sally ascribed to the provisions of the Wild 

 Birds Protection Acts. 



