178 THE BIRDS OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



kinds. Yarrell says that the young are supplied by 

 the parent birds ahnost solely with grasshoppers, and 

 in Spain, throughout which country this Bunting 

 is exceedingly common, I have seen the old birds 

 taking moths to their nestlings. The few nests I 

 have met with were all placed on steep banks by the 

 side of a road or footway, amongst low bushes and 

 herbage, and were built of moss and grass-stalks, 

 with a lining of cow's hair. The eggs are generally 

 five, white, with a lilac tinge, and thickly spotted 

 and streaked with black or dark brown. I have kept 

 Cirl Buntings in confinement, but they have few 

 attractions as cage-birds, being, in common with 

 other Buntings, dull, silent, and greedy, and without 

 any remarkable beauty of plumage. This species is 

 common in Algeria, where I found it breeding at 

 some four thousand feet above the sea. 



78. CHAFFINCH. 



Fringilla ccelebs. 



This is decidedly one of the most abundant birds 

 in our neighbourhood, and is too well known to 

 require a detailed notice at my hands. An inter- 

 esting account of the reasons for bestowing the 

 epithet " ccelebs " on this species will be found in the 

 9th part of the 4th edition of Yarrell's 'British 

 Birds' (pp. 70, 71) ; and in reference to the real or 

 supposed separation of the sexes in winter, I may 

 state that, with us, there appears to me to be a great 

 increase in the numbers of our Chaffinches every 

 year at the beginning of the cold weather, and 

 undoubtedly the females at that season seem to form 



