280 



THE CHAFFINCH. 



bush to bush before me, as I wander through the 

 flowery fields, next to poor cock robin, the chaffinch 

 is my favourite bird. I see him almost at every 

 step. He is in the fruit and forest trees, and in the 

 lowly hawthorn : he is on the housetop, and on the 

 ground close to your feet. You may observe him 

 on the stack-bar, and on the dunghill ; on the king s 

 highway, in the fallow field, in the meadow, in the 

 pasture, and by the margin of the stream. 



If his little pilferings on the beds of early radishes 

 alarm you for the return of the kitchen garden, think, 

 I pray you, how many thousands of seeds he con- 

 sumes, which otherwise would be carried by the wind 

 into your choicest quarters of cultivation, and would 

 spring up there, most sadly to your cost. Think 

 again of his continual services at your barn door, 

 where he lives throughout the winter, chiefly on the 

 unprofitable seeds, which would cause you endless 

 trouble were they allowed to lie in the straw, and to 

 be carried out with it into the land, on the approach 

 of spring. 



His nest is a paragon of perfection. He attaches 

 lichen to the outside of it, by means of the spider s 

 slender web. In the year 1805, when I was on a 

 plantation in Guiana, I saw the humming bird making 

 use of the spider s web in its nidification ; and then 

 the thought struck me that our chaflinch might pro- 

 bably make use of it too. On my return to Europe, 

 I watched a chaffinch busy at its nest : it left it, and 

 flew to an old wall, took a cobweb from it, then con- 

 veyed it to its nest, and interwove it with the lichen 

 on the outside of it. Four or five eggs are the 



