210 WILD BIRDS 



unless frost drive various birds to the saltings, the 

 best he can hope for is a few linnets. 



No doubt our home linnets are added to by 

 Continental linnets in autumn, as are our skylarks, 

 robins, and rooks. But it is not only in autumn and 

 winter, it is through the year, that linnets abound 

 in England. What bird in the furze commons and 

 thickets, and the hedges and lanes of the South or 

 the Midlands, more familiar than a linnet ? I know 

 of none, and I find the linnet almost everywhere, 

 as I find the wren. 



He is not a wood bird, yet during the winter I often 

 see a pair of linnets roaming the woods. I see him 

 there now and then at roost time, and sometimes 

 appears a sprinkling of linnets among the loose 

 shower of small birds and thrushes and blackbirds 

 which scurry by the guns in the wood when the line 

 of beaters begins to draw near. But the furze 

 common, the great tangled clematis lane, and the 

 garden and shrubbery are the chief haunts of the 

 linnets through most of the year. 



We carry about with us many pictures of birds ; 

 little incidents illustrating bird spright and flight 

 and song make an impression on the mind that lasts. 

 Few bird scenes have impressed me more than the 

 linnet scenes. The linnet in spring and summer has a 

 certain sweet vivacity all his own. The goldfinch, 

 perhaps, approaches the linnet nearer than any of 

 the other finches in this, but he not quite equals the 

 linnet. 



The linnet lyric is a gem. It may be snatchy and 





