CATCHING CHAFFINCHES. 289 



corner of a meadow where a Chaffinch was singing, 

 the man stuck a dilapidated dummy, which he fished 

 out of the crown of his bowler hat, into an old field 

 rail, and two little pieces of flat steel weighted at 

 the base with lead and besmeared with birdlime 

 over it, in such a position that any Chaffinch de- 

 scending to do battle would be likely to touch one 

 or both of them with its wings and become en- 

 tangled. His call-birds were placed just beneath, 

 and their cages hidden by a few handfuls of grass. 

 One Cock Chaffinch came, but he was either too 

 wary or cowardly to attack with sufficient vigour to 

 be caught, and contented himself with sitting 

 uneasily beside the disreputable counterfeit dummy, 

 and listening to the defiant challenges of the poor 

 little prisoners hidden amongst the grass just below. 

 My brother succeeded in photographing him in this 

 position. 



A strange peculiarity of the male Chaffinch in 

 confinement is that the gloomier its surroundings 

 are the lighter its heart appears to grow, for it 

 sings best when kept in continual darkness. In less 

 humane times the Germans used to take an un- 

 speakably cruel advantage of their knowledge of 

 this peculiarity and destroy the poor bird's sight 

 with a red-hot wire. 



A friend of ours has a small allotment garden on 

 the outskirts of Brighton, which he has arranged 

 in such a cunning manner that it forms a haven 

 of rest for little feathered wanderers who land on 

 that part of the coast when they are journeying 

 northwards in the spring to their breeding haunts. 

 It is here, too, that many of our summer visitors 

 take a last rest before flying across the Channel 

 and away to their winter quarters in the sunny 

 South. This little ornithological oasis is hemmed 



