THE CHAFFINCH. 95 
The nest takes from five days to a fortnight to construct, all depending upon 
whether the bird is ready to lay. In form it is a small neat cup, slightly con- 
tracted at the top, and tolerably deep; but curiously enough Seebohm quotes a 
note by a Mr. C. Doncaster on a very aberrant nest seen by him on a thorn tree 
by the river Derwent, which appears to have been like that made by an English 
Chaffinch sent to New Zealand, and which has been figured by Dixon as evidence 
that birds do not inherit the design upon which they construct their nests. This 
year (1896) I again turned a Canary loose in an aviary, and had the pleasure of 
seeing her prove the fallacy of Dixon’s belief, by building a cup-shaped nest in a 
bunch of fir-twigs, her only pattern being set by a Canary on the opposite side 
of the aviary sitting in the usual square box. 
The materials of the nest, as already stated, vary a good deal; the normal type 
being firmly felted together and formed of moss, a few lichens and spiders’ cocoons, 
and lined with rootlets and hair, intermingled, or covered, with a layer of thistle- 
down; but one of my nests has a rather rough aspect, being constructed of roots 
and fibre, mingled with fine worsted, and with hardly any moss or lichen in the 
outer walls, but with the usual lining; others have feathers mixed with the usual 
materials in the lining. The eggs, four to six in number, are, as a rule, either 
greenish, or rosy flesh-coloured, the markings consisting of diffused sienna or ruddy 
brownish patches and streaks, some of which enclose blots, commas, dots, streaks, 
or hair-lines of blackish-brown; in some eggs the reddish markings are chiefly 
massed over the larger end; in others the darker markings form a subterminal 
zone, whilst in rare instances they are wholly absent, the eggs being bluish, slightly 
clouded with reddish: the rarest type, of which I have only taken two clutches, is 
exactly like some eggs of the Bullfinch, clear blue, with grey shell-spots, purplish 
patches, and almost black surface spots. The Chaffinch certainly frequently rears 
three broods in a year; nidification lasting from April sometimes to August. 
The natural food of the Chaffinch in summer, as already stated, consists largely 
of insects, their larvee, spiders, and the soft foliage and unripe seeds of weeds; but 
at other times it lives chiefly upon various kinds of seeds of weeds, and of grain. 
In confinement it may be kept for years in health without insect food, but never- 
theless a few caterpillars, mealworms, cockroaches, or spiders certainly are good 
for it. / 
'I think it was about the year 1887 that I took and hand-reared a nest of four 
young Chaffinches, which eventually proved to be two pairs: the nestlings are not 
easy to feed, as they always back away from the food, wagging their heads violently 
from side to side, so that it requires patience and dexterity to pop it into their 
wide-gaping mouths. My two male birds came into magnificent colour, and sang 
