THE FINCHES 



THE PINCHES 

 [EDMUND SELOUS] 



If there be any one group of our smaller birds by whose total 

 disappearance from the land we should lose more than by that of 

 any other, it is perhaps though only perhaps the Finches, those 

 brisk, bright, active, and cheerful denizens of our woods, fields, and 

 hedge-rows. There are, indeed, the Turdidce, in which both the black- 

 bird and thrush are included but I rule these out as not small 

 enough. The robin is his own group Erithacus, a bird quite per se. 

 It were much to lose him, but could we set even the robin against 

 all our little finch army, and prefer to lose them all ? It must be 

 held at least doubtful, even were the wren counted with him. No 

 one will seriously name the Tits, and if some would urge the 

 Larks or the Warblers, here too, as far as the first are concerned, 

 it would be practically only the skylark we should lose a heavy 

 calamity truly ! yet, as against the imagined one, there is this to be 

 said, that if we lost both him and all our warblers too nightingale, 

 blackcap and all it would at least be only in the leaf -of the year 

 that we should miss them, and not the whole year through. The 

 lark is forgotten in winter, and, contrary to what is usual, it is our 

 summer prosperity that the rest would have abandoned, leaving to 

 stay on with us, both through that and our adversity "the winter 

 of our discontent " the true Finches, the Fringttlince. 



It is with these, and not any further with the above speculation, 

 which, in serving to introduce them has now served its purpose, that 

 this chapter will deal, and first with that strange-looking species, the 

 crossbill, or common crossbill common, but by no means here 

 familiar a bird which, with its few "co-mates and fellows" hi the 

 peculiarity that its name implies, differs from all others of its class an 

 excellent reason, surely, for not on that account alone separating it 



