112 THE FINCHES 



of horse-hair, on which a few feathers lie softly curled, like kittens 

 asleep on a bed. Here either the two birds sit, alternately, or only 

 the hen does, or the male but occasionally, or just for a little while, 

 according to authority and the state of their minds. 



The brambling's birch-built nest, if not made quite so neatly and 

 delicately as the last, is almost prettier, whilst the materials made use 

 of, drawn from woods higher-lying and wilder than our own, give to it 

 a sort of northern charm and expression. Green mosses, indeed, that 

 we know, or that seem familiar, make the outer woof of it, and are 

 bound with such webbings of spider or caterpillar as the chaffinch 

 uses, but it is starred all over with flat, disc-like pieces of white 

 lichen, which, mingling with strips of peeled birch-bark, also white or 

 of a pale, glaucous hue, give to the whole a silvery appearance, half soft 

 and half shining, like the tree against which it lies pressed. Within 

 there is wool, and, on that, the feathers of the white grouse or ptar- 

 migan, which show above the rim, curling inwards so as almost to 

 "quite over-canopy" the brooding bird. 1 The nest is much larger 

 than that of the chaffinch. 2 This bird-gem of the north is placed 

 generally in a spruce or birch-tree if the latter (which seems to be 

 the one preferred 3 ), in the fork where a main branch leaves the trunk, 

 at some ten or twelve feet from the ground. 4 If the spruce is 

 chosen, both the nest and the visiting birds are more effectively 

 concealed amidst the dark drooping frondage and streaming lichens 

 that hang down like tails from each bough. These latter may become 

 now the chief or even the only building materials employed. 5 

 Whether, either by such or other means, the bird consciously 

 endeavours to hide its nest is perhaps a nice point, in connection 

 with which the following interesting habit, which it would appear to 

 have, may be mentioned. " I have noticed," says Collett (author of 

 Bird Life in Arctic Norway}, " that in the west, where Corvus comix is a 



1 J. Gould, Birds of Great Britain. 



2 E. R. Alton and J. A. Harvie-Brown, quoted in Sharpe and Dresser's Birds of Europe. 



3 Sharpe and Dresser (op. cit.), who quote Gould and P. and P. Godman. 



4 E. R. Alton and J. A. Harvie-Brown in Sharpe and Dresser, op. cit. 

 6 R. Collett, as quoted by Sharpe and Dresser in op. cit. 



