IMPRESSIONS OF SOME ENGLISH BIRDS. 145 



choir, and tracing each note home to its proper 

 source. It was, indeed, a burst of song, as the Duke 

 of Argyll had said, but the principal singer his Grace 

 does not mention. Indeed, nothing I had read, or 

 could find in the few popular treatises on British or- 

 nithology I carried about with me, had given me any 

 inkling of which was the most abundant and vocifer- 

 ous English song-bird, any more than what I had 

 read or heard had given me any idea of which was 

 the most striking and conspicuous wild -flower or 

 which the most universal weed. Now the most abun- 

 dant song-bird in Britain is the chaffinch ; the most 

 conspicuous wild - flower (at least in those parts of 

 the country I saw) is the foxglove, and the most 

 ubiquitous weed is the nettle. Throughout the month 

 of May, and probably during all the spring months, 

 the chaffinch makes two-thirds of the music that 

 ordinarily greets the ear as one walks or drives about 

 the country. In both England and Scotland, in my 

 walks up to the time of my departure, the last of 

 July, I seemed to see three chaffinches to one of 

 any other species of bird. It is a permanent resi- 

 dent in this island, and in winter appears in immense 

 flocks. The male is the prettiest of British song- 

 birds, with its soft blue-gray back, barred wings, and 

 pink breast and sides. The Scotch call it shilfa. 

 At Alloway there was a shilfa for every tree, and its 

 hurried and incessant notes met and intersected each 

 other from all directions every moment of the day, 

 like wavelets on a summer pool. So many birds, 



