CHAPTER IV 

 THE BULLFINCH 



THE bullfinch is a bird that loves trees 

 and bushes, and which one hardly ever sees 

 in the open country ; yet it is not the 

 great woods, where tall oaks and ashes tower 

 skywards with trunks like columns in a cathedral, 

 that it chooses for its haunts, but rather the fringe 

 of the woods, where there are thickets of black- 

 thorns and briers. From such strongholds it flits 

 out along the hedgerows to gardens and orchards, 

 where it is a gay if not always welcome visitor. 

 This taste for bushy places, rather than the recesses 

 of the woods, it shares with many other birds. 

 When strolling through a coppice you will usually 

 find that there is much more life on the outskirts 

 than there is inside. Among the trees things 

 are very quiet, but the surrounding thickets abound 

 with birds. Blackbirds, thrushes, willow wrens, 

 and chiffchaffs, to say nothing of greenfinches 

 and chaffinches, are there in numbers, and the 

 bushes seem alive with them. 



Yet the bullfinch, even if it does not care for 

 the heart of the big woods, loves the trees, shade, 



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