102 RUDDY-BREASTED BIRDS. 



sive single note. Some of the Red-Backed Shrike's 

 foreign relatives at times straggle across to the 

 British Isles, but among regular British birds there 

 is none resembling it in its striking colouring and 

 markings, and none of approximately its own size 

 with a hooked bill. 



HAWFINCH.— Plate 46. Length, 7 inches. Head, 

 face, and rump fawny-brown ; the back darker brown ; 

 nape gray ; throat and small patch about the eye 

 black ; breast vinous-brown ; wings black, with bold 

 white patch ; central feathers of tail brown ; others 

 blackish, with w^hite tips ; bill conical and extra- 

 ordinarily massive. Resident. 



Eggs. — 4-6, pale green or buff, streaked with gray 

 and spotted sparingly with blackish-brown; l'0x"7 

 inch (plate 125). 



Nest. — Of twigs and lichens, lined with fine roots 

 and hair, and placed from a few feet to thirty feet 

 above the ground, in old thorn-bushes, apple and 

 pear trees, or on the horizontal branches of oaks, 

 beeches, and firs. 



Distribution. — Fairly common in south-eastern 

 England, rarer northwards, absent from Cornwall ; 

 rare in Wales save in Brecon ; practically unknown 

 in Scotland and Ireland. 



The Hawfinch is a bull-necked, stout-billed bird, 

 and because of its wary habits harder to see than to 

 recognise. There is none of the smaller perching 

 birds with so powerful a structure as the bill of the 

 Hawfinch, used, as it is, to break open fruit-stones in 



