68 LIFE AND SPORT IN HAMPSHIRE 



cap, in the apple blossom very likely a sight, once 

 seen, not soon forgotten or the pettychaps in the 

 currant bushes. But I think they are only travellers 

 on their way to their summer nesting spots in copse 

 and clematis lane. Another class of small-garden 

 birds is made up of certain birds that stay all the 

 year in England, but only visit the garden and 

 shrubbery for an hour or so at a stretch from time 

 to time during the season. The bullfinch, three of 

 the titmice, and the missel thrush are in this class. 

 The bullfinches come in pairs ; and, though I under- 

 stand, I cannot share the feeling of the fruit-grower 

 against them ; for it happens that they have come to 

 my garden on a few days in the year to search out, not 

 the buds, but some trifling flower seed, and the sight 

 of the plump, rosy breast and the bold black and 

 white, at the edge of the grass, is very choice. Through 

 much of the year the paired bullfinches are as in- 

 separable as linnets and it is as if linnets in spring 

 and summer could not live out of each other's com- 

 pany for five minutes. A few days in the year a 

 pah* of bullfinches come for small seed, months 

 between each visit; whereas the missel thrush will 

 almost live in the garden, a week or fortnight at a 

 stretch, when yew fruit reddens. Some seasons the 

 goldfinches will nest in the yew ; but, when they 

 do not nest there, the visits remind me of the 

 bullfinches ; they come with that refined little " twit " 

 for half-an-hour on a few late summer mornings to 



