22 The Birds of Pembrokeshire. 
“Comparatively a scarce bird; during the severe weather last 
February, I did not notice more than three or four together at 
any time in the yards. Nothing has struck me more than the 
scarcity of this bird.” When we first went to reside at Stone 
Hall we had no Sparrows there. At length one or two appeared, 
and their increase was rapid. It was not until we one day 
visited Llanrian, on the north coast, that we saw Sparrows in 
anything like the numbers to which we have been accustomed 
in England. The old church tower there is thickly covered 
with ivy in which hundreds of Sparrows were harbouring and 
nesting. The absence of cornlands, and the sparsely inhabited 
country, in which isolated mountain farms are far apart, would 
account for the comparative scarcity of the House Sparrow, in 
most places a far too abundant pest. Mr. Jefferys informs us 
that the House Sparrow is by no means common at Tenby. 
CHAFFINCH, /vingi/la celebs—A common resident, by far the 
most numerous, after the Common Linnet, of the whole finch 
tribe in the county. Mr. Dix thought it ‘by far the most 
numerous of the Conirostres, exceeding in numbers all the others 
combined.” He adds that he had never noticed any separation 
of the sexes, or addition to its numbers during the winter. He 
thought the Chaffinch the only small bird that, in his district, 
was as numerously represented as it is in the south and east of 
England. Wedo not agree with him in this opinion. The 
Common Linnet and the Yellow Hammer, not to mention several 
other small birds, are quite as abundant in Pembrokeshire as we 
ever met them in the English counties we were familiar 
with. At Stone Hall our Chaffinches were remarkably tame, very 
often coming into the house to pay us visits, and they would 
build their nests as close to us as they could in the creepers 
trained around our windows. One pair that did so came in 
daily at the dining-room window to feed on any seeds that fell 
on the floor from our various cages, and finding the eggs in 
the nest to be unusually large and brightly coloured, the effect, 
we considered, of the hen bird’s good feeding, we appropri- 
