36 The Food of Some British Wild Birds. 



robin, I believe the good it would do would more than compensate 

 for the harm. At present the attitude of all farmers must be one of 

 extermination, and to this end it would seem very desirable that 

 the use of poisoned grain should be' permitted. 



CHAFFINCH. 



FringiUa coelebs, Linn. 



Apart from what I wrote in 1905 (30) this bird has generally 

 been regarded as beneficial. Archibald (4) states that it "feeds 

 largely on insects, and brings up its young almost entirely on an 

 insect diet. ... It also eats beechmast and quantities of 

 small seeds, amongst them those of many noxious weeds. Some of 

 the seeds are shelled before being eaten, but others are swallowed 

 without any such preparation. . . . Though it eats corn, it is 

 only when its numbers are very great that it causes any serious 

 loss to the farmer by so doing, but at times it does considerable 

 damage to young turnips, radishes, and similar crops." 



Smith (105) writes : " The chaffinch is not generally considered 

 a bad bird, but he is a great disbudder of fruit, gooseberries, 

 currants, and plums, especially after a frost, when these birds will 

 be found in twos and threes all over the plantation, eating the buds. 

 They are responsible for much of the damage done to plums, 

 cherries, gooseberries, and currants, by squeezing the blossom to 

 extract the honey in it ; while they are also very fond of lady-birds 

 and their larvae, clearing off large quantities of these useful 

 insects." 



Florence (47) who has examined the stomach contents of thirty- 

 four birds, summarises the contents as follows: "31 contained 

 grain; 1, Indian corn; 30, seeds of weeds; 2, decomposed vegetable 

 matter; 2, insect remains." 



Post-mortem Records. 



Post-mortems have been made of sixty-eight adult and twelve 

 nestling birds, with the following results : 



