Tue ZooLocist—APRIL, 1876. 4875 
served. And yet occasionally it is not artificial: a wild bird shot at 
Sprowston, near Norwich, on the 17th of July, 1871, and which, to the 
best of my belief, had never had its locks shorn, exhibited a very pale 
yellow head, with hardly an admixture of any other colour; and another 
specimen, which had never known a cage,—before me as I write,—is so 
pervaded by this colour that not only is the head mainly yellow, but the 
whole of the neck and shoulders, and even a portion of the wings and back. 
I have never seen a pure yellow yellowhammer, but I have an albinism and 
a melanism; at least the latter is a dark chocolate colour, blackest about 
the throat and fore parts, as melanisms often are.—J. H. Gurney, jun. 
The Male Chaffinch Nest-making.—In glancing over the long-looked-for 
9th part of Professor Newton’s “ Yarrell,” I observe at p. 72, in describing 
the nest of the chaffinch, it is stated that “‘ This exquisite fabric seems, on 
the evidence of more than one observer, to be the work of the hen bird 
only.” Now Ihave myself seen the male bird in the act of nest-making. 
Iwas walking leisurely along, smoking a pipe, about fifty yards from the 
stable-yard gates, when I observed the nest of a chaflinch in some sprouts 
at the side of an oak: the tree stands down a hill, bringing the nest low 
enough for me to see down into it. The nest seemed almost finished, 
except the lining, and in it sat the male bird busily engaged in weaving the 
hairs into it with his bill, sometimes looking over the side, and every now 
and then sinking low into it and turning round in a rolling motion—in 
fact, he seemed to understand nest-making quite as well as the female. 
Iam sorry I did not send you a note of this at the time. I knew then it 
had been stated that the female only worked at the nest-making, which 
made me more interested in what I saw. It had, however, entirely escaped 
my memory until I again read it the other day.x—John Sclater; Castle 
Eden, Durham. 
Tree Sparrow and Wood Pigeon building in a Magpie’s Nest.—The tree 
sparrow is very fond, not exactly of nesting in a magpie’s nest, but of 
building its own nest inside. I-once found, in a thorn tree, a magpie’s nest 
which in April had five eggs in it: I took the eggs out, wanting a tree 
sparrow to take up its residence therein; but imagine my surprise when 
one day I saw a wood pigeon fly out, and on getting up I found that the 
bird had put sticks on the bottom, and had laid three eggs—a fact almost 
without a parallel in the annals of Natural History: the wood pigeon 
hatched two of her eggs, and the third proved unfertile—Charles Matthew 
Prior ; The Avenue, Woburn Road, Bedford. 
Greenfinch.—I have a yellow or yellowish greenfinch; the tint is strongest 
on the rump and primary quills; but my object is not so much to record 
this, which was killed some time ago (at Blofield, in Norfolk) as to ask 
Mr. Forbes, or any of your correspondents who are interested in varieties, 
whether they have ever seen a white greenfinch. I never have, and I have 
