IMPRESSIONS OF SOME ENGLISH BIRDS 133 



source. It was, indeed, a burst of song, as the 

 Duke of Argyll had said, but the principal singer 

 his grace does not mention. Indeed, nothing I 

 had read, or could find in the few popular treatises 

 on British ornithology I carried about with me, 

 had given me any inkling of which was the most 

 abundant and vociferous English song-bird, any 

 more than what I had read or heard had given me 

 any idea of which was the most striking and con^ 

 spicuous wild flower, or which the most universal 

 weed. Now the most abundant song-bird in Britain 

 is the chaffinch, the most conspicuous wild flower 

 (at least in those parts of the country I saw) is the 

 foxglove, and the most ubiquitous weed is the 

 nettle. Throughout the month of May, and prob- 

 ably during all the spring months, the chaffinch 

 makes two thirds of the music that ordinarily greets 

 the ear as one walks or drives about the country. 

 In both England and Scotland, in my walks up to 

 the time of my departure, the last of July, I seemed 

 to see three chaffinches to one of any other species 

 of bird. It is a permanent resident in this island, 

 and in winter appears in immense flocks. The 

 male is the prettiest of British song-birds, with its 

 soft blue- gray back, barred wings, and pink breast 

 and sides. The Scotch call it shilfa. At Alloway 

 there was a shilfa for every tree, and its hurried and 

 incessant notes met and intersected each other from 

 all directions every moment of the day, like wave- 

 lets on a summer pool. So many birds, and each 

 one so persistent and vociferous, accounts for their 



