272 THE BULLFINCH 



were put in a cage in the stable, and one was exposed 

 in a small cage on the top of the garden wall to attract 

 others to the like fate. The gardeners were inexorable. 

 Madame was irritated by the sight of the rifled twigs. 

 " And all last Sunday was spent, by the wife and me," 

 said the gardener, "shying stones at the rascals among 

 the trees in our own garden." The next day a market- 

 gardener shot no less than six Bullfinches on his 

 grounds. 



As' a rule, my friends on this estate, are extremely 

 good to birds, and they attract them by placing breeding 

 boxes, and supplying food in winter ; but these sturdy 

 rascals find no quarter. I pleaded hard for them, but, 

 I fear, without result. The gooseberry blossoms was 

 certainly nearly all destroyed, but it was in a quest for 

 the destructive larvae of the winter moths, which make 

 their appearance in the early spring and eat the not yet 

 expanded buds. A fruit grower has stated that he 

 allowed the Bullfinches to eat as much as they pleased; 

 the crop of fruit has usually been as good as if the birds 

 had not done any disbudding, and when, by a rare 

 chance, the trees had borne no fruit at all, he knew it 

 was because the trees required clearing, and the next 

 year the crop would be all the finer. In some cases the 

 tree appears to be entirely disbudded, and still fruit has 

 appeared. 



It is only for a short period that the Bullfinches visit 

 the fruit trees. During the rest of the year they eat the 

 seeds of harmful weeds dock, thistle, groundsel, plan- 

 tain ; and one authority states that a single Bullfinch 

 has been known to devour 238 seeds of the common 

 spear-thistle in twenty minutes ! A writer in the 

 Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society say that he 



