THE HAWFINCH. 
259 
I have known greenlinnets taken young at Fort- William, near 
Belfast, that after being kept for some little time, were given their 
liberty every morning. In the evening they returned as regularly 
to their cage to roost, as in a wild state they would have done 
to their favourite tree or shrub.* Old birds very soon become 
tame after capture. 
The only food which I have found in the stomachs of a number 
of these birds killed during winter was grain and seeds of different 
kinds ; — in addition to which there were fragments of brick or stone. 
THE HAWFINCH. 
Grosbeak. 
Coccothraustes vulgaris , Flem. 
Loxia coccothraustes , Linn. 
Fringilla „ Temm. 
Is an occasional winter visitant. 
A very fine specimen was shot near Hillsborough, county of Down, 
upwards of twenty years ago. In the winter of 1832-33 (?), the 
Rev. G. M. Black observed a pair of these birds feeding for a long 
time upon the haws of some old thorn-trees at Stranmillis, near 
Belfast ; — he managed to approach within about fifteen paces, so 
as to see them well. Mr. J. Y. Stewart, in his paper on the 
Birds, &c., of Donegal, gives the following interesting account of 
two of these birds, which he killed and examined anatomically. 
The communication is dated from Ards House, Dec. 4th, 1828 : — 
“ I shot a pair of these birds a few days ago, in fine plumage ; the first instance, 
I believe, of their occurring in Ireland. Their strength of beak, as compared with 
the size of the bird, is quite wonderful ; it results from very strong and large muscles, 
which, extending on either side from the eye to the occiput [hind head] reach from 
the lower mandible to the top of the cranium, where they meet ; they are separated 
from the eyes by deep bony ridges, to which they are firmly attached. By contract- 
ing these muscles, which are thus so firmly attached to the skull, it exerts such a 
force as enables it to crack, with its hard and strong bill, the thick stone of the haw- 
* The canary-finch will rarely do this. But one which flew away from its cage at 
Cromac, one morning in the beginning of September, returned on the following 
morning at an early hour before any of the inmates of the house were up, and made 
known its presence by tapping at one of the windows with its bill. On a cage being 
presented, the bird flew eagerly into it. 
s 2 
