74 BIRDS OF LANCASHIRE. 



Skaife considered it plentiful near Blackburn, and Mr. 

 K. J. Howard informs me that about the year 1874 Mr. 

 W. L. Constantine found upwards of twenty nests in the 

 vicinity of the Koman beacon on MellorMoor : it seldom, 

 however, appears there in such numbers as this, and is 

 usually much more abundant in autumn and winter 

 than summer. Mr. J. B. Hodgkinson says that it still 

 breeds on the mosses near Preston, as also on Long- 

 ridge and Beaton Fells : but Mr, W. A. Durnford has 

 not personally identified it in Furness, though he says 

 he has good authority for inserting it in his list of 

 the birds of that district. It leaves the higher grounds 

 in winter, and approaches the towns, feeding, in com- 

 pany with its congeners, in considerable flocks on the 

 stubble-fields and waste lands. Mr. John Hardy con- 

 siders it the most common species of the genus near 

 Manchester, out of the breeding-season, and thinks the 

 supply from the immediate neighbourhood sufficient to 

 account for the size of the flocks, without their being, 

 like those of the Linnet, increased by individuals from 

 other and more distant districts. He writes : — " During 

 the years of the Cotton Famine, when the factory girls 

 wandered in their neighbourhoods further away than is 

 usual with them, knitting or otherwise employing them- 

 selves to kill the time, I found some nests of the Twite 

 lined with lengths or bits of worsted, one in particular 

 being lined with white in a neat and remarkable 

 manner." This bird is more or less gregarious in the 

 breeding- season, several nests being usually within a 

 small area : Mr. T. Altham tells me he once found a 

 nest on Pendle on which the old bird sat singing. Five 

 eggs are laid towards the end of May. 



