132 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND 



Tender as its age, it clung to the bark tenaciously with its fine 

 but strong claws. I have never myself observed this Creeper at 

 a distance from the woods. Yet it might at any time adapt its 

 habits to life among the treeless moorlands of our eastern 

 division. Mr. Heywood Thompson this summer [1891] showed 

 me a stone wall (bordering one of his plantations) in which a pair 

 of Tree Creepers had reared their young. They nested in this 

 wall early in spring, but their first nest came to grief. They 

 were not discouraged, but built a new nest in another interstice 

 among the loose stones of the dyke, and this second experiment 

 proved successful. Stone walls on the barest fells shelter so 

 many spiders and small insects as to afford a plentiful subsistence 

 for Creepers. 



Order PASSERES. Fam. FRINGILLIDjE. 



Sub-Fam. FRINGILLINjE. 



GOLDFINCH. 

 Carduelis elegans, Steph. 



Fifty, or even thirty years ago, the Goldfinch was com- 

 paratively common in Cumberland and Westmorland. From 

 the Sol way to the shores of Morecambe Bay, the ' flinch ' — as 

 Cumbrian bird-fanciers call it — nested freely in gardens and 

 orchards, not merely in the east and west of this area, but at 

 Keswick and other places in the heart of the Lake district. 

 Men who have passed their lives in their native village and are 

 hardly grey-haired have frequently assured me that, when they 

 were young, Goldfinches were plentiful. At the present time the 

 stronghold of the Goldfinch is the Eden valley. I have not 

 met with the species on the S.E. border, but Mr. Hutchinson 

 considers that it is slightly increasing at Underbarrow. At 

 Milnthorpe Mr. Bell took a nest of Goldfinch eggs a few years 

 ago. It was a common bird in the west of Cumberland before 

 bird-catchers were so numerous. Now it is uniformly a very 

 scarce bird. Mr. Parker of Skirwith Abbey wrote to me in 

 December 1888, that whilst riding to the meet, or driving 

 about, he had often seen flocks of from twenty to a hundred 

 individuals flying about and feeding in the fields near the road. 



