CHAFFINCH. 71 



large flocks of immigrant Chaffinches, which seem composed 

 almost entirely of females, though young males that have 

 not yet put on the external distinction of their sex may be 

 among them. These strangers appear chiefly on the east 

 coast of England, from Yorkshire southward, but how far 

 they penetrate to the interior, and whether any great number 

 of them remain with us till spring, are questions hitherto 

 unanswered. That our home-bred birds should in some 

 degree make room for them is only to be expected, but to 

 what extent this movement takes place is also unknown. 

 In Shetland, on the contrary, the number of females is said 

 by Saxby to be very small as compared with that of the males, 

 but in the north of Ireland, according to Thompson, very 

 large flocks, among which there are none of the latter, occur 

 at times in winter, while again he has seen flocks of moderate 

 size comprising a fair proportion of both sexes, and these he 

 is disposed to believe were indigenous birds. 



Their flight, like that of most Finches, is undulating, and 

 their food for the greater part of the year consists chiefly of 

 insects, varied, especially during the winter, with seeds, 

 some of which being those of very troublesome weeds, the 

 birds that consume them ought rather to be deemed useful 

 auxiliaries to the farmer and gardener, though they un- 

 doubtedly pilfer from stacks, and may at times do not 

 inconsiderable damage by picking out the newly-sown corn 

 or other seeds, when these are not buried deeply enough. 

 But the loss thus inflicted seems to be more than compen- 

 sated by the gain that results from their destruction of 

 noxious insects, as witness the opinions of observers so well 

 qualified as Mr. Hepburn (Zool. p. 298 and p. 573), M. 

 Florent Prevost and Mr. Cecil Smith (B. Somerset, p. 174), 

 and the enmity often shewn towards this species is most 

 likely unjustifiable. 



The Finches generally are remarkable for the compact, 



. soft and beautiful nests which most of them build, and the 



Chaffinch is pre-eminently so. However different may be 



the outward appearance of the neat and closely-woven 



structure, the material upon which the whole tissue seems to 



