142 



THE BIRDS OF THE WOODS 



Chaffinch. 



The central European representative of the great group of 

 finches is the familiar chaffinch (Fringilla coslebs), which may be 

 met with almost wherever there are trees, its favourite resort being, perhaps, 

 beech-woods. Well-built, handsome, bold, and active, very quarrelsome with its 

 fellows, particularly during the pairing-season, it has a habit of bristling up its 

 head-feathers as a crest every now and then, while it is also brisk and sprightly 



in its movements at all 

 times. Though a finch, 

 and therefore a seed- 

 eater,thechaffinch feeds 

 largely on insects ; the 

 seeds it prefers being 

 those of the weeds that 

 the farmer and the 

 gardener do their best 

 to destroy. Although 

 sheltering during the 

 winter in the upper 

 foliage of fir-trees, it 

 rarely chooses a fir as 

 a nesting-place. The 

 nest is usually built in 

 a bush or among the 

 - lower branches of a 

 deciduous tree, far out 

 from the trunk, where 

 two or three twigs fork. 

 Cup-like in form, it is 

 by no means easy of 

 discovery, since it is 

 decorated on the out- 

 side with green and 

 grey moss and lichen, 

 so as to harmonise 

 with the colouring of 

 the branch or stem 

 against which it rests. 

 The ringing song of 

 the chaffinch resounds 

 in the woods from the beginning of llarch, sometimes even earlier: ami later on 

 in the year it is heard the whole day through, even during the hot hours of noon. 

 The note of the chaffinch is carefully defined as " a perfect and complete toll-loll -hill - 

 chickweedo " in the rules of the singing matches which used to be so frequent in 

 certain parts of London and still take place ; the prize being won by the bird 

 which delivers the greatest number of these notes in a quarter of an hour, no note 

 with a syllable short being counted. The matches are sung in heats of two 



A COCK CHAFFINCH. 



