20 ODD HOURS WITH NATURE 



they still retain their seed, and the siskin is a 

 wonderful adept at their extraction. Walk along 

 a river bank on a day when the snow covers the 

 ground, and it is easy to follow the movements 

 of the siskin flock. Under each tree the birds 

 have visited the snow is speckled with the debris 

 of broken catkins or scattered seed. Equally 

 easy is it to find the birds themselves. They 

 are social creatures in the cold weather, and 

 move about in flocks which may number hundreds. 

 As they work at the hanging cones, themselves 

 suspended like green fruit, they maintain an in- 

 cessant musical chattering which tells their where- 

 abouts a hundred yards away. Alarm them, and 

 with heightened note they wheel simultaneously 

 into the air, fly round a large circle, and alight 

 again in a single tree not far from that which they 

 left. In a moment they are as busy as ever, 

 worrying the seed -bearing cones, more often than 

 not with their backs to the earth. The gregarious 

 habits of the siskin and its absorbed devotion to 

 its work of food-getting render it an easy victim 

 of the birdcatcher, who can, with care, approach 

 sufficiently near to pick it off the branch on which 

 it is feeding with the limed tip of a fishing-rod. 

 The result is visible in every bird-dealer's window, 

 and, there is reason to fear, in the diminishing 

 abundance of the species. In some ways resem- 

 bling the siskin, though in others very different, 

 is the many-coloured, most parrot -like of British 

 birds, the crossbill. Nothing that man possesses 

 can tempt it from the fir and larch woods in 

 which its whole life is passed, and where it tears 



