74 OUR BRITISH SONG BIRDS. 
adds colour to the scene on a cold winter’s morning. 
Watch their varied movements as they traverse the bare 
branches of the trees. Hear them calling sweetly to each 
other as they pass along, and note the many tokens of 
affection that each red-breasted cavalier exhibits towards 
his gentle little wife, clad as soberly as a Quakeress, in 
quiet drab and grey. You see no bickering and fighting in 
the flock, each bird agrees amicably with his neighbours, 
and should one of them be shot, his friends will return 
again and again to his dead body, and endeavour by 
repeated cries to induce it to accompany them. The 
Bullfinch’s affection for his mate is very great indeed, and 
I can illustrate this by narrating the history of the pair of 
Bullfinches in my collection. A friend and I came upon 
them in the early Spring, as they were busily engaged upon 
the buds of a hawthorn bush, and I shot the female bird. 
The male flew away, but almost immediately returned. 
Seeing us, however, he fled to a neighbouring copse. My 
friend imitated the Bullfinch’s call-note: the little fellow 
joyfully replied, and, flying towards us, was soon laid beside 
the body of his wife he had loved so dearly. It was a 
heartless thing to do, perhaps, and I felt somewhat 
ashamed of myself at the time, but as the Bullfinch was 
a desideratium in my collection, it surely was much better 
to take the lives of a pair of birds thus early in the year 
than later when a family might have been dependent upon 
them; and as they were the first of their species I ever 
shot, so they will be the last, for I am too fond of the 
living birds to advocate unnecessary slaughter. I have 
mounted them as we saw them perched upon a branch, and 
the male still seems to sing his love-song to his little mate, 
whilst she, with head turned towards him, lends him atten- 
tive ear, as she doubtless did full many a time in life. 
The song of the Bullfinch is not remarkable for any 
great beauty, some of the notes are deep and mellow, 
