104 CHAFFINCH FIELDFARE 



There are, doubtless, many home internal migrations within 

 this kingdom that want to be better understood ; witness those 

 vast flocks of hen chaffinches that appear with us in the winter 

 without hardly any cocks among them.* Now, were there a 

 due proportion of each sex, it would seem very improbable 

 that any one district should produce such numbers of these 

 little birds, and much more when only one half of the species 

 appears ; therefore, we may conclude, that the fringillce ccelebes, 

 for some 'good purposes, have a peculiar migration of their 

 own, in which the sexes part. Nor should it seem so wonderful 

 that the intercourse of sexes in this species of birds should be 

 interrupted in winter ; since, in many animals, and particularly 

 in bucks and does, the sexes herd separately, except at the 

 season when commerce is necessary for the continuance of 

 the breed. For this matter of the chaffinches, see Fauna 

 Suecica, p. 85, and Sy sterna Natures, p. 318. I see every winter 

 vast flights of hen chaffinches, but none of cocks. 



Your method of accounting for the periodical motions of 

 the British singing birds, or birds of flight, is a very probable 

 one, since the matter of food is a great regulator of the actions 

 and proceedings of the brute creation : there is but one that 

 can be set in competition with it, and that is love. But I 

 cannot quite acquiesce with you in one circumstance, when 

 you advance that, " When they have thus feasted, they again 

 separate into small parties of five or six, and get the best fare 

 they can within a certain district, having no inducement to go 

 in quest of fresh-turned earth." Now, if you mean that the 

 business of congregating is quite at an end from the conclusion 

 of wheat-sowing, to the season of barley and oats, it is not the 

 case with us ; for larks and chaffinches, and particularly linnets, 

 flock and congregate as much in the very dead of winter as 

 when the husbandman is busy with his ploughs and harrows. 



Sure there can be no doubt but that woodcocks and field- 

 fares leave us in the spring, in order to cross the seas, and 

 to retire to some districts more suitable to the purpose of 

 breeding, f That the former pair before they retire, and that 



* We Lave already stated, in a note at page 32, that chaffinches do not 

 always separate into flocks of male and female during winter. May not 

 the supposed hen chaffinches, so frequently seen, be the young birds of the 

 previous summer, and the males not having yet assumed the complete 

 plumage, are not to be distinguished from the females ? ED. 



f Fieldfares visit us in October, and leave us again about the beginning 

 of April. Their principal food in this country is the fruit of the haw- 

 thorn, and other berries, worms, and insects. " Perfectly gregarious as 

 the fieldfare is," says Knapp, " yet we observe every year, in some tall 



