66 CHAFFINCH 
nesting places (it has already established itself in the 
young Crown plantations at Barrule), and it sings and 
breeds in the little garden plots of town houses, and feeds 
boldly with Sparrows in the quieter streets and even on 
rubbish-heaps along the beaches. It perches freely on 
houses, and I have noticed one or two on the ruined walls 
of Peel Castle. The song commences to be practised very 
early in spring, or indeed in winter; and in April every 
hedge and shrubbery rings with the loud, cheerful, and 
often-repeated notes, which in this island have often to 
make amends for the want of the melody of more delicate 
singers. From mid-April to the beginning of May is the 
usual laying time. Mr. Kermode mentions a nest of young 
hatched on 23rd April 1884, which were fed by the parent 
with dead hive-bees. A female which had settled in my 
garden was twice widowed in some unexplained manner in 
one spring before she finally succeeded in bringing off her 
brood on the branch of an escallonia against the house 
buildings. We heard one in song on the Calf in May 1901. 
In winter Chaffinches make up a large part of the mis- 
cellaneous flocks of small birds which frequent the stack- 
yards. 
An albino specimen was hatched with three normal 
nestlings in the garden of Mr. Crosthwaite at Ballasalla in 
1904. Mr. Joughin tells me that he saw and heard in song 
a cream-coloured Chaffinch at Poortown, near Peel. 
Chaffinches are noted in Man in both the spring and 
autumn migration, and have occurred in numbers at the 
Chickens. 
In Ireland it is a very numerous species, especially in 
winter; abundant over the British mainland wherever there 
are trees. It is known in Shetland as a migrant only, but 
breeds rather scarcely in Orkney, and in suitable localities 
in the Outer Hebrides, where numbers pass on migration. 
