Fourneys of the Finches. Ly? 
household passes beneath the trees in which they 
build, they show no fear. 
Just as men from various causes congregate in 
particular places, so there are spots in the fields—in 
the country generally—which appear to specially 
attract birds of all kinds. Wide districts are almost 
bare of them: on a single farm you may often find 
a great meadow which scarcely seems to have a. 
bird in it, while another little oddly-cornered field is 
populous with them. This orchard and garden at 
Wick is one of the favourite places. It is like one of 
those Eastern marts where men of fifty different na- 
tionalities, and picturesquely clad, jostle each other 
in the bazaars: so here feathered travellers of every 
species have a kind of leafy capital. When the nesting 
time is over the goldfinches quit the orchard, and only 
return for a brief call now and then. I almost think 
the finches have got regular caravan routes round and 
across the fields which they travel in small bands. 
In the meadow, just without the close-cropped 
hawthorn which encloses one side of the orchard, is a 
thick hedge, the end of which comes right up to the 
apple trees, being only separated by the ha-ha wall 
and a ditch. This hedge, dividing two meadows, is 
about two hundred yards long and well grown with a 
variety of underwood, hazel, willow, maple, hawthorn, 
blackthorn, elder, &c., and studded with some few 
elms and ashes, and a fine horse-chestnut. Down the 
ditch for some distance runs a little stream (except in 
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