IN GARDEN, PARK, AND SHRUBBERY. 45 



trunk of a beech or an oak. A yew or holly, or 

 even a whitethorn, is occasionally selected. It is 

 built of fine twigs, stalks of weeds, roots, and 

 moss, and lined with dry grass, finer roots, and 

 hair. The five or six eggs are pale olive-green 

 or brownish buff in ground colour, streaked and 

 spotted with dark greenish brown and pale gray. 

 All through the nesting period both parents keep 

 remarkably quiet, and are most careful not to 

 betray the whereabouts of their home. The 

 young birds keep company with their parents 

 long after they are able to fly. Later on these 

 parties of Hawfinches become larger as brood 

 joins brood, and then the beech woods are often 

 visited for the mast. The Hawfinch is little of a 

 songster, merely uttering a few twittering notes, 

 and its usual call-note is something like that of 

 the Greenfinch, only harsher. 



In amongst the fruit-trees in the garden the 

 gentle, pretty GOLDFINCH (FringiUa carduelis] widely but 

 rears its young. Like several other of the dwellers Sbuted. 

 here, it only retires to the orchards, the gardens, 

 and the shrubberies during spring and sum- 

 mer ; the remainder of the year it affects other 

 haunts. The scarlet face, black crown and 

 hood, black and yellow wings, and more or less 

 brown body plumage easily distinguish this bird 

 from all its congeners. Of all the nests to be 

 found within the compass of this ramble, few 

 exceed in beauty the tiny cradle of the Goldfinch. 

 It is usually placed in a fork of the lichen-covered 

 branches of the fruit-trees, less frequently in the 

 whitethorn hedge or in the shrubbery, and is made 

 outwardly of grass roots and moss, spiders' webs 

 and lichens, and then lined with hair, feathers, 



