96 IN NATURE'S WAYS 



chaffinch's " wine -song," running, " Fritz, Fritz, 

 Fritz, wilt thou wine with me ? " And there is the 

 "Double song," really the best of them, though it 

 looks absurd as expressed by these syllables : 



" Finkferlinkfinkfink, zischesia, harvelalalalaziskutchia." 



When the flocks break up, the cock chaffinches often 

 fight lively duels for their wives, and show anger and 

 jealousy at other rival songsters. A mate won, nesting 

 begins in April when is woven, often in a fruit tree, 

 that lovely, perfectly round chaffinch cup, with its 

 feathery bed, and perhaps with a beautiful covering 

 of grey lichen. Here the hen lays four or five of the 

 familiar blotched eggs : " while the chaffinch sings on 

 the orchard bough." 



Rooks in Uliniet* 



"There is a large rookery round this house, the inhabitants of 

 which seem to get their livelihood very easily ; for they spend the 

 greatest part of the day on their nest-trees when the weather is mild. 



These rooks retire every evening, all the winter, from this 

 rookery, where they only call by the way, as they are going to 

 roost in deep woods. At the dawn of day they always revisit their 

 nest-trees, and are preceded a few minutes by a flight of daws that 

 act as it were as their harbingers." 



