THE BULLFINCH, 



405 



the ground, and sometimes below it. I have known several instances 

 where the young Larks would suffer themselves to be fed by hand 

 as they sat in their nests, but the parent birds always seemed dis- 

 tressed at the intrusion into their premises. The materials of which 

 the nest is made are dry grasses, bents, leaves, and hair, the hair being 

 generally used in the lining. It will be seen that the sober coloring 

 of these substances renders the nest so uniform in tint with the sur- 

 rounding soil that to discover it is no easy matter. The eggs are four 

 or five in number, and their color is gray-yellow washed with light 

 brown and speckled with brown of a darker hue. They are laid in 

 May, and are hatched in about a fortnight. 



Toward the end of autumn and throughout the winter tlie Larks be- 

 come very gregarious, " packing " in flocks of thousands in number, 

 and becoming very fat when snow should cover the ground, in which 

 case they speedily lose their condition. These flocks are often aug- 

 mented by the arrival of numerous little flocks from the Continent 

 that come flying over the sea about the end of autumn, so that the bird- 

 catchers generally reap a rich harvest in a sharp winter. 



The next group is that of the Pyrrhulinaj, of which our Bullfinch 

 is a familiar example. 



It cares little for open country, preferring cultivated grounds, woods, 

 and copses, and is very fond of orchards and fruit-gardens, finding there 

 its greatest supply of food. This 

 bird seems to feed almost wholly 

 on buds during their season, and 

 is consequently shot without mere y 

 by the owners of fruit-gardens. 

 The Bullfinch has a curious pro- 

 pensity for selecting those buds 

 which would produce fruit, so 

 that the leafage of the tree is not 

 at all diminished. Although the 

 general verdict of the garden- 

 keeping public goes against the 

 Bullfinch, there are, nevertheless, 

 some owners of gardens who are 

 willing to say a kind word for 

 Bully, and who assert that its mis- 

 chievous propensities have been 

 much overrated. 



It is true that the bird will often- 

 times set hard to work upon a fruit tree and ruthlessly strip off every 

 single flower-bud, thereby destroying, to all appearance, the prospects 

 of the crop for that season. Yet there are cases when a gooseberry- 



The Bullfinch {Pyrrhula rubicUla). 



