THE GOOL-FINCH OR COOLER 125 



nests with but one, two, or at most three youngsters, when 

 the old cock will be singing his sweet song in the dusty hedge- 

 rows whilst they sleep through the yellow harvest moon. 



But June and July are their favourite months, and only 

 the more uxorious start their nurseries in April. And the 

 hen-birds are knowing. Do you but disturb one when sitting 

 on her beloved eggs, and watch her fly down the road feigning 

 lameness, or tumbling about with half-spread wings as one 

 dazed with fear. And if, deluded, you approach her, lo ! she 

 rises over the hedge and is gone. But far different is it 

 with her young brood, who are weak on the wing for long 

 after they have left the straw-house. Indeed, they can be 

 caught by hand if flushed from a hedgerow and chased so 

 that they scatter over a field. They seem unable easily to 

 rise from the ground. 



Young nestlings are at times to be seen in September, 

 but when the waves of cold pass over the many-coloured 

 marshland, the yellow buntings collect in flocks with other 

 buntings and finches and go a hunting for corn and seeds 

 over the fields; and as the clods get powdered with white 

 snow, the goolers draw up to the farm-houses or yard before 

 some barn where the old-fashioned flail is still wielded, the 

 old thresher keeping an old muzzle-loader beside him, with 

 which he occasionally takes a " shoot" at the little flock, 

 selling the chance " rarity " to the guilty " receiver," the 

 bird-stuffer ; and so the gooler too mayhap takes his place 

 in a glass case in some commonplace room. 



YELLOW-HAMMERS. 



