44 BRITISH BIRDS, WITH THEIR NESTS AND EGGS. 
Caucasus, and possibly to Northern Persia and Turkestan. On the African Conti- 
nent a few examples breed in Algeria, and the species has been known to straggle 
as far northward as Egypt. 
In Great Britain the Hawfinch is local, being rare in Wales and the extreme 
western counties from Cornwall to Cumberland; but breeding in suitable localities 
in most of the counties of England and in Ireland. ‘To Scotland it is an accidental 
winter visitant. 
Although the form of the Hawfinch is anything but graceful, its colouring is 
rather pleasing :—The adult male has the head of a cinnamon brown colour, a line 
round the base of the bill, the lores, chin, and throat, black; the nape is smoky 
grey; the back and scapulars dull chestnut, somewhat paler on the rump, and 
becoming rather yellower on the upper tail-coverts; wings bluish black, the median 
coverts white; the quills with a white patch near the middle of their inner webs, 
gradually increasing on the inner feathers, and tipped with blue; the tail-coverts 
cinnamon brown, much elongated; tail feathers black, white at the extremity of 
the inner webs: under surface of body pale Dove-brown, fading to white on the 
under tail-coverts: beak in summer bluish grey, darker at the tip; in winter 
brownish flesh-coloured; feet flesh-coloured; iris whitish. The female is duller in 
colour, with the white markings less pure. The young are without black on the 
throat, or grey on the nape; the head is also yellower, and the under surface of 
the body whiter; the mantle is mottled, and the breast and flanks are barred with 
dark brown. 
The Hawfinch is resident with us; but it is probable that at least some of 
the young leave our shores at the approach of winter, their places being taken by 
immigrants from the north: in the autumn they not infrequently fly into the nets 
of the birdcatchers, and are disposed of at very moderate prices. During the 
summer months the Hawfinch is an exceedingly shy bird, and is far more frequently 
heard than seen; its call-note, consisting of a whistle four times repeated, and 
drawn out at the finish, being familiar to most frequenters of its haunts; the harsh 
Greenfinch-like sound, sometimes mistaken for its call-note, is probably its cry of 
defiance. The song is a very inferior performance of short duration, somewhat like 
that of an inferior Greenfinch. 
The Hawfinch frequents well-wooded localities, such as forest-clearings, small 
woods, plantations, shrubberies, heavily timbered parks, where patches of yews or 
hawthorn and bramble are left to break the monotony of the landscape, and old 
orchards; in such places it builds, varying the site of the nest according to the 
haunt which it frequents; thus in a wood or clearing it usually makes its home 
in some old hawthorn, tangled with blackberry, vines, or in a holly, or on the 
