HAWFINCH. 217 



Suffolk will be seen from the following extracts from 

 the "Bury Post" : About the first week in June, 1857, 

 a paragraph appeared in that journal, stating that a 

 nest of the hawfinch had been found in Ickworth Park, 

 containing five young ones. This statement drew, the 

 next week, some further information from another corres- 

 pondent, who says, " Some 24 or 25 years since, I saw 

 in the garden of Great Finborough Hall, a nest of 

 young ones, and some had been reared in the garden at 

 least one year preceding. In the following June, Mr. 

 Nicholls, the then gardener, and a most enthusistic 

 naturalist, wrote me to pay him a visit, and in his 

 note he says, "we have two nests of the hawfinch 

 in the kitchen garden at this time, and one is on the 

 same tree you saw them last year. It is but a few days 

 since I saw a nest, full of young ones, in a garden in 

 the neighbourhood of Bury. It is perhaps rather sin- 

 gular that in all cases the birds selected apple trees as 

 their abode. In addition to these we may add, that 

 last year a nest of young were reared in the pleasure 

 grounds of either Ampton or Livermere, at the moment 

 I forget which, but I believe the former place." 



A very favourite resort of the hawfinch in winter 

 seems to be in the thick foliage of old yew-trees, afford- 

 ing both close concealment and food in the shape of 

 berries. In December, 1852, and January, 1853, I was 

 shown four of these birds which had been killed at 

 Taverham, near Norwich, as they passed in rapid flight 

 to and from the yew-trees near the hall. The gardener, 

 who shot them with much difficulty, described them as 

 the shyest birds he ever met with. Again, in the winter 

 of 1855, six or eight specimens were procured, at different 

 times, in the village of Blofield, where, as at Taverham,, 

 the great attraction appears to have been some yew-trees 

 in a garden. The man who shot them also spoke of the 

 great difficulty he had in approaching them, observing, 

 2 F 



