144 THE FINCHES 



evolutions have been gone through, of an evening, that they reach this 

 final rendezvous. Some little time before sunset, they collect into any 

 tall trees that, like outposts, sentinel their chosen camp, from whence, 

 later, they fly, in a body, into such as may stand close against it, or 

 rise from its midst. One would think that the next stage would be 

 the descent into the shrubbery itself, but daylight still lingers, and 

 the birds are not yet ready for sleep. In small parties, of about a 

 dozen together, they clash out over the country, where they are 

 joined by other and larger ones, with which various family relations 

 greenfinches, chaffinches, or even, in favoured localities, goldfinches 

 may be commingled. And now, swollen in numbers and augmented 

 in species, the flocks return, and, dropping, one after another, into 

 their leafy ante-room, seem to wait there for bedtime. At last, when 

 " the sun's rim dips," the whole of the assembly fly down in an orderly 

 manner from the high twigs amongst which they have been perched, 

 into the dark valley of evergreen trees and shrubs below, where they 

 pass the night crowded together, and keeping as close to the trunk 

 of each holly or laurel in which they cluster as their numbers will 

 permit. 1 



Next to a Portugal laurel, perhaps which he cannot expect 

 always the brambling loves beech-trees to roost in. They have, 

 indeed, the advantage, next morning, of producing beech-mast, 

 to which he is partial so partial that in England, where he can get 

 it, he has been seen, in flocks numbering thousands, amongst "the 

 beechen woods." 2 In the north it is different. There, amidst dark 

 shrouding conifers, with which his gay copper tintings and white and 

 black patchery have doubtless been " shown " to assimilate, he sleeps 

 in security, nor dreams of the poor purblind pine-marten. 



The roosting habits of the greenfinch have been already referred 

 to. 3 Those of the linnet have this salient peculiarity amongst 

 finches, viz. that he often roosts on the ground. "Amongst the 



1 Saxby, Birds of Shetland. North Wales is here referred to. 



2 T. H. Nelson and W. S. Clarke, Birds of Yoi^kshire. 



3 Ante, p. 91. 



