THE BIRDS OF HELIGOLAND 387 



187. Chaffinch [BUCHFINK]. 

 FRINGILLA CCELEBS, Linn. 



Heligolandish : Bockfink, from Buchfink = Beechfinch. 

 Fringilla ccelebs. Naumann, v. 13. 

 Chaffinch. Dresser, iv. 3. 



Gros-bec pinson. Temminck, Manuel, i. 357, iii. 260. 



No one of the numerous bird-visitors to this island has more 

 angry epithets hurled after it than the Chaffinch during its spring 

 migration. This treatment, indeed, is not meted out to it by the 

 gunner or fowler, but by everybody who has sown a bit of earth in 

 his modest garden with cabbage, radish, or turnip seed ; for should 

 this have been done towards evening on one of the first days of 

 April, we may be sure to find the little plot at dawn of the next 

 day covered with Chaffinches, which, by the time one may happen to 

 intervene, will probably have dug up and consumed half of the seed 

 for their breakfast. To prevent this wholesale plunder, a net is 

 stretched about a foot high above the piece of ground ; but if this 

 is not tightly fastened down with pegs all round, or if a single 

 mesh of it is torn, the simple creatures are sure to creep through 

 the opening and destroy as much as possible before one arrives on 

 the scene. 



No possible benefit is, on the other hand, derived from these birds 

 except that in two or three instances a fine old cock bird finds its way 

 into the cage and satisfies the modest demands of its owner by its 

 monotonous tune. The bird is not caught for culinary purposes, 

 though if a method for the capture of the same were established, 

 one would frequently be able to obtain thousands of them from the 

 middle of September to the end of October. All the potato-fields 

 of the Upper Plateau are often covered with clouds of these birds 

 during the autumn migration. It is also fairly abundant during the 

 spring migration, from the end of March to the end of April, but its 

 numbers at that time bear no comparison with those of the autumn 

 migration. 



Now and again a pair of these birds have nested here. In 

 general the breeding area of the species extends over the whole of 

 Europe from Portugal to the Ural, and in Scandinavia advances 

 northward as long as it can find a district offering the least amount 

 of arboreal vegetation. In the east, towards Asia, it is found nest- 

 ing in solitary instances only ; and, according to Sewertzoff, it is but 

 rarely met with during the winter months in Turkestan. 



