SISKm.— MEALY REDPOLL. 133 



13th and 13thj 1866, it was seen feeding on alder seeds, in 

 company with the Lesser Redpoll, and that the Siskin is 

 the rarer bird of the two. The nest is said to be very like 

 that of the Chaffinch, but smaller. 



MEALY REDPOLL. 



Idnota linaria. 



The Mealy, known to bird-catchers as the Stone, Redpoll, 

 has by some been regarded as only a large variety of the 

 Lesser Redpoll. It appears very irregularly in the winter, 

 sometimes in large flocks, but is never so abundant as the 

 species next to be described, and its numbers appear to have 

 decreased considerably of late years. It was unusually com- 

 mon in the neighbourhood of Brighton about 1875, since 

 which time it has been comparatively rare. I have never 

 myself had many opportunities of observing it. On the 

 north side of the Downs, a short distance from them, Poyn- 

 ings Common, which is covered with rushes and coarse 

 herbage, and bounded on one side with brushwood and high 

 timber, used to be one of its favourite places of resort, where 

 it fed on the seeds of the thistle and of the common knap- 

 weed [Centaurea nigra), and thus engaged, I once saw about 

 a dozen, some of them very brightly coloured, and admitting 

 a very near approach. Further into the Weald I have neither 

 met with nor heard of it. Most of those that have been 

 found have been on the cultivated land between the Downs 

 and the sea. It has never nested in the county, nor is there 

 any record of the bird having been seen later than the middle 

 of February. It has probably acquired the title of Mealy 

 Redpoll from the elongated white fringes to the plumage, 

 which it assumes in the winter, giving it the appearance of 

 having been powdered over with flour. 



