84 
BIRDS OF LEICESTERSHIRE AND RUTLAND. 
for food, when I perceived the hen Chaffinch approach the seed-box, and, taking 
a few seeds in her bill, begin to feed the youngster. After a while the male 
bird joined her, and together they attended to the stranger until it was able 
to look after itself. The behaviour of the male bird was most amusing. He 
disdained to feed the Sparrow directly himself, but was not averse to doing 
it by proxy, so he carried his seeds to the hen, and she placed them in the 
mouth of their mutual 'p'l/'otege.” (Recorded also in ‘ Transactions Leicester Lit. 
and Phil. Soc.,’ Jan., 1889, p. 25.) 
Harley considered that, in the vicinity of Deer-parks, the Chaffinch finished 
its nest in a more beautiful manner than ordinarily, and instances one which 
he took in Garendon Park, writing that “ it was most interesting to remark 
with what skill and industry the Chaffinch had inwrought the pale, buff, and 
white hairs of the Fallow-Deer and some other species of herbivorous mammalia, 
with other kinds of substances, in the formation of the nest in question.” The 
eggs vary : IMr. Davenport notes “ an extraordinary, pale-green, elongated egg, 
taken at Skeffington in May, 1879,” also a clutch of five, shaped like a Snipe’s 
and of the colour of a Starling’s eggs, and two clutches of a delicate pale-blue, 
entirely unspotted ; and Mr. W. A. Vice presented to the Museum, on 9th jMay, 
1885, a nest containing five eggs of this description, taken by him at Blaby. 
In Rutland. — Resident and common. — Mr. Horn possesses a nest ornamented 
with fragments of rotten wood instead of with lichen. 
BRAMBLING. Fringilla montifringilla, Linnaeus. 
“ Mountain-Finch,” “ French Pye or Pie {i.e. Pied)-Finch.” 
A winter visitant, sparingly distributed, and, though often found in flocks, 
does not remain to breed in Britain. — IMr. Babin gt on wrote in 1842 (Appendix 
‘ Potter,’ p. 67) : — “ Several shot twenty years ago at Swannington, by IMr. Grundy, 
who kept a wounded bird for some time in a cage. It lost all its yellow and 
red plumage, and turned brown, after being fed on hemp-seed.” He further 
stated that the species had since been killed near Glenfield, and that, in Jan., 
1841, during a long snow, several were shot at Castle Donington ; also that in 
Jan., 1842, ten or twelve were shot near Coleorton. Harley wrote: — “During 
the winter of 1843-4 it was very abundant, and great numbers were shot in 
various parts of the county. It appeared again in the winter of 1854-5.” The 
Museum Donation-book records one presented on 29th March, 1860, from Barkby 
Thorpe. IMr. Davenport obtained one at Skeffington in Dec., 1880. In the 
winter of 1884 they were unusually numerous in Leicestershire, and I received 
specimens in February and March from Thornton Reservoir, Saddington, and 
from a field on the Groby Road where corn was being winnowed, and to which 
the Bramblings resorted in hundreds. Mr. W. A. Evans shot five at two shots 
(three males and two females), at New Parks, on 1st March, 1886, and presented 
