LOXIA PYRRHULA. 429 



bushes. I never saw it here, so need not write second-hand. 

 It is larger than the common one — SJ inches long, the other 6. 

 The head, neck, throat, breast, and rump are bright carmine, 

 tinged with vermilion ; back and scapulars, black ; the feathers 

 edged with crimson ; wing coverts tipped with crimson, forming 

 two bars across the wings ; quills and tail feathers, grey, edged 

 with pale crimson ; under parts, greyish-white, also tinged with 

 crimson. In the young males what is crimson in the old ones 

 is pale orange, the bars on the wings white \ the females like 

 the young males. 



The Common Bullfinch. 



Pyrrhula Vulgaris. {Temm.) Loxia Pyrrhula. {Linn.) 



" The valley rings with joy and mirth, 

 Among the hills the echoes play 

 A never, never ending song 



To welcome in the May." — Wordsworth. 



This bird is neither vulgar nor common about St Andrews, 

 though called " vulgaris" — indeed, as our sweetest pleasures 

 are the simplest, many of our most common birds are the 

 handsomest and sweetest singers. It is retiring, does not 

 associate with other birds, but generally seen in pairs, or, when 

 the young are flown, in families of six or seven, which continue 

 during winter till spring and nature sever the connection, and 

 again draw pairs together for the reproduction of families. 

 You seldom see them in summer except in their sylvan haunts 

 amidst the thickest woods and copses, where it breeds. They 

 generally select a thorn or a low tree in the thickest part. The 

 nest is of fine roots and moss, lined with wool and hair, 

 sometimes with fine fibres ; is like a greenfinch's, only built on 

 roots or twigs, but more loose and shallow, like a hawfinch's 

 or crossbill's ; eggs, four or five — bluish-white, spotted with 

 light brown. It lays in May, and breeds in Mountmelville 

 Woods, but is not common anywhere, and seems less so by 

 being secluded, finding its food in woods and neighbouring 

 fields. Its chief food is seeds and buds of trees, such as white 

 thorn, larch, and birch. It sometimes makes havoc amongst 

 fruit trees in gardens, especially plum trees, for which the blue- 

 tit is blamed when searching for larvae. The buds are not 

 swallowed whole, but first divided by their sharp-cutting bill. 



