i/o THE HAWFINCH 



in its place affix one with hair nooses. The result will be a number 

 of starlings caught, along with many sparrows, the latter making 

 excellent pie. In the country a number of horsehair nooses attached 

 to a cord of several yards length, the longer the better, and laid 

 down in a grass field where manure is dotted over it in heaps ready 

 for spreading, especially if placed near or just by the edges of 

 these heaps, will effect capture of great numbers of starlings, cold 

 weather being chosen for snaring. Why these birds should not be 

 exported is matter for surprise, the taste for small birds as food 

 being so pronounced abroad. 



HAWFINCH. This bird is so shy in its habits as to escape detec- 

 tion in plundering green peas, and accordingly has to be watched for 

 incessantly to secure effective shooting. Netting out is the only 

 safeguard, shooting being too expensive and uncertain for general 

 adoption. As it is increased to excess in some localities, game-pre- 

 servers should grant permission for the destruction of the nests in 

 woods to persons not likely to disturb game, or give instructions for 

 decimating this lover of apple and pear pips, and some say damsons 

 and cobnuts and filberts. It is useful by capturing quantities of 

 insects in summer, principally for its young, as many as forty 

 caterpillars having been found in a female bird. 



CHAFFINCH. This bird is a great friend of the forester, as it feeds 

 largely on insects, bringing up its young almost entirely on an 

 insect dietary, chiefly small caterpillars and aphides, and eats 

 quantities of weed-seeds. To the farmer the chaffinch is both a 

 friend and foe ; the former on account of its destroying countless 

 insect pests, and weed seeds, and the latter through its plucking up 

 newly-sown seed and sprouting crops, particularly those of the 

 Cruciferce, Composite, and Graminecz orders of plants. Of Cruciferce, 

 swede, turnip, thousand-headed cabbage or kale, kohl rabi, cabbage, 

 rape, and mustard are the principal crops grown for stock ; while of 

 weeds are the famous charlock, shepherd's purse, cuckoo-flower, 

 hedge mustard, wild radish, and penny cress or Mithridate mustard. 

 Of Composite, yarrow or milfoil (only used on light soils), and chicory 

 represent farm crops ; but of weeds there is the notorious dandelion, 

 daisy, May -weed, hawkbit, hawkweed, sow thistles, corn marigold, 

 groundsel, ox-eye daisy, prickly thistles, knapweed, stinking 

 chamomile, beautiful cornflower, and burdock. Of Graminecz, 

 wheat, barley, oats, and rye represent farm crops grown mainly 

 for the sake of their grain, and rye-grass, cocksfoot, foxtail, timothy, 

 etc., are grown for their herbage, while of weeds the dread darnel, 

 common bent, marsh bent, black bent or hungerweed, oatgrass, 

 brome grasses, meadow barley grass, quaking grass, and Yorkshire 

 fog. Balance in these three orders alone the evil the chaffinch 

 commits against the good it must do in the matter of devouring the 

 seeds. Of Caryophyllacece the farmer only grows spurrey and that 

 very rarely, of weeds he has to contend with the white and red 



