BRITISH BIRDS 



localities it is as completely extinct as the Great Auk or 

 the Dodo, a fowl which it is imperative to name in such 

 a connection. 



One circumstance that contributes not a little to the 

 increasing scarcity of the Goldfinch is that it is a late 

 breeder, and the young are often taken, indeed nearly 

 always, before they are quite independent of their parents, 

 the consequence being that thousands upon thousands of 

 them die miserably every year from indigestion at a 

 longer or shorter (but never long) interval, after passing 

 from the custody of the dealers, some of whom have 

 written to various papers denying the deplorable mortality: 

 nevertheless, it is unhappily only too certain. 



The sexes of the Goldfinch can be distinguished, as a 



rule, by the darker 

 colour of the small 

 wing-coverts, which 

 are browner in the 

 female than in the 

 male; in a full-grown 

 adult of the latter sex 

 they are jet black, 

 but in the females are 

 fringed with brown. 

 In the case 6f young 

 birds, even when 

 they have put off the 

 immature or nestling 

 "Greypate" attire, 

 the distinction is not 

 so marked, but the 

 cocks are always 

 darker than the hens : 

 the yellow tinge of 

 the breast and the extent and depth of the colour of 

 the "blaze" are often pointed to as differentiating signs 

 of sex, but are not more infallible than that of the shoulder 

 feathers. 



The nest of the Goldfinch is often built in an orchard, 

 usually among the terminal twigs of an apple- or cherrv- 



THE GOLDFINCH. 



