66 BRITISH BIRDS, WITH THEIR NESTS AND EGGS. 
with buffish; beak pinkish-white, with the terminal half of the upper mandible and 
tip of the lower mandible dark horn-brown; feet flesh-brown; iris hazel. In con- 
finement the beak and feet become paler and more pink in tint. 
The female is usually slightly smaller than the male, has a narrower crown, 
and a much narrower, straighter, and more regularly tapering beak; the crimson 
on the head rarely extends quite so far backward on the forehead and throat; the 
cheeks are much more stained with buff-brownish; the lesser coverts are distinctly 
browner; the yellow on the wing is rarely so brilliant; and the under parts are 
not quite so pure a white, showing a suspicion of grey when compared with the 
male. Young birds, known to bird-catchers as ‘‘ Grey-pates,” show no black or 
crimson on the head, have buffish tips to the wing-feathers, and brownish under- 
parts, with indistinct spotting on the breast. The general characteristics of the 
adult birds are acquired after the first moult, but the full beauty of the species 
is not brought out until after its second moult. 
Birdcatchers always distinguish the sex of the Goldfinch by ‘“‘the colour of the 
shoulder,”’ intense black in the male, rusty black in the female: this, however, is 
not so easy to note in young birds as is the different outline of the beak when 
seen from above, or the greater arch of the culmen in the male beak when seen 
from the side. 
Although the Goldfinch does not haunt the interior of thick woods, it frequently 
hangs about the more open spaces on their outskirts, especially where rank weeds 
such as thistles, teasels, or plantains abound, upon the seed of which it delights 
to feed; but orchards, shrubberies, gardens, and waste patches on badly cultivated 
ground are its favourite resorts in the summer time; whilst in the winter it 
wanders throughout the country in small or large flocks seeking for food. A con- 
siderable number of Goldfinches nevertheless join the stream of migrants towards 
the south in the autumn months. 
The Goldfinch is certainly much rarer in our islands than it formerly was, but 
I cannot think even Mr. Swaysland’s statement—that at one time a boy could catch 
forty dozen in a morning, or the undoubted fact that birdcatchers would rejoice if 
they could do so now, will at all account for the great diminution in their numbers ; 
the continual reckless destruction of all kinds of birds of prey would probably 
counterbalance the numbers obtained by ’catchers, who only capture sufficient to 
supply the bird-market, whereas the Merlin, Sparrow-Hawk, Hen-Harrier, and 
most of the Owls, which are more or less destructive to small birds, pay no 
attention to close-seasons, but destroy throughout the year. On several occasions 
bird-catchers have brought me Sparrow-Hawks which have swooped at the decoy- 
Goldfinch and been caught in the nets. 
