280 THE CHAFFINCH. 



bush to bush before me, as I wander through the 

 flowery fields, next to poor cock robin, the chaffinch 

 is my favourite bird. I see him almost at every 

 step. He is in the fruit and forest trees, and in the 

 lowly hawthorn : he is on the housetop, and on the 

 ground close to your feet. You may observe him 

 on the stack-bar, and on the dunghill ; on the king's 

 highway, in the fallow field, in the meadow, in the 

 pasture, and by the margin of the stream. 



If his little pilferings on the beds of early radishes 

 alarm you for the return of the kitchen garden, 

 think, I pray you, how many thousands of seeds he 

 consumes, which otherwise would be carried by the 

 wind into your choicest quarters of cultivation, and 

 would spring up there, most sadly to your cost. 

 Think again of his continual services at your barn 

 door, where he lives throughout the winter, chiefly 

 on the unprofitable seeds, which would cause you 

 endless trouble were they allowed to lie in the straw, 

 and to be carried out with it into the land, on the 

 approach of spring. 



His nest is a paragon of perfection. He attaches 

 lichen to the outside of it, by means of the spider's 

 slender web. In the year 1805, when I was on a 

 plantation in Guiana, I saw the humming bird 

 making use of the spider's web in its nidification ; 

 and then the thought struck me that our chaffinch 

 might probably make use of it too. On my return 

 to Europe, I watched a chaffinch busy at its nest : 

 it left it, and flew to an old wall, took a cobweb from 

 it, then conveyed it to its nest, and interwove it 

 with the lichen on the outside of it. Four or five 



