82 BRITISH BIRDS, WITH THEIR NESTS AND EGGS 



months haunts commons, hedgerows, plantations, small woods, orchards, and shrub- 

 beries, in all of which situations I have very often found its nest, the latter being 

 most frequently constructed in a furze-bush or hawthorn-hedge, though I have 

 taken many a nest from hazel-branches in a plantation, from evergreen and other 

 shrubs, from tangled bramble, sometimes almost or quite on the ground, from 

 currant and gooseberry bushes, and even from tufts of heather. 



In size, strength, and materials, the nest varies considerably, but it is always 

 tolerably compact, and rarely so large as that of a Greenfinch : among those which 

 I took under the impression that they differed, I selected eight for my collection 

 all of them dissimilar in character, five of these which I took in 1883 I thus 

 described in the "Zoologist" for that year: " only one had any moss in its con- 

 struction; this one is somewhat slightly built for the species, but the walls are 

 strengthened with coarse straws, evidently selected from a dung-hill. The second, 

 excepting that it is not so deep, is not at all unlike a small nest of the Yellow 

 Bunting. Its construction is, however, decidedly firmer, and the grasses used in 

 the walls are similar to what one sees in the nest of the Greater Whitethroat. 

 The third nest is untidy, loosely put together, and has blackish straggling roots 

 projecting from the sides. The fourth is unusually deep, and is formed of roots, 

 fibre, and wool, with a few white hairs towards the interior. The fifth is very 

 ragged in construction, formed of coarse bleached roots, lined with fine fibre and 

 wool." 



The eggs number from four to six, five being the usual clutch ; they are 

 either pale bluish- green or pale buffish; those of young birds being occasionally 

 unspotted, but most eggs spotted, speckled, blotched, and sometimes (though rarely) 

 streaked with reddish- and purplish-brown ; the markings are usually most numerous 

 at the larger end, the dark spots now and then forming a subterminal zone. 



The flight of this bird is swift and undulating ; as it flies it usually twitters ; 

 in the autumn and winter when Linnets collect into flocks, often of considerable 

 size, and pass over the fields in search of food, this twittering is especially char- 

 acteristic. The bird-catchers declare that the birds say " tell, tell, tell" as they fly, 

 and at a distance from the flock you can understand what is meant by this 

 rendering, but when you get three or four Linnets under a sloping roof in a good 

 sized aviary, and listen attentively as they fly together from end to end, you find 

 that what they really say is " turra, tit, turra, turra, turra." 



The ordinary call of the Linnet is a rather high pitched twit, twit ; the sexual 

 call is te-ewy ; the call of the young for food is chiwi, chiwi, chiwi ; the song, to my 

 mind, has been too much extolled; it is pretty enough, but there is too much 

 chuckle and too little brilliance in it ; the notes give one the idea of whistling 



