BULLFINCH NESTING. 
I 
A fig for the gardener, a fig for the old fashioned naturalist, 
and, — as he likes them, and as some sort of compensation to 
the little bullfinch for the unjust persecutions he has long suffered 
— a fig for the hero himself. Alas ! how many poor birds have 
fallen victims to the errors promulgated by book -learned fogies 
who, instead of repairing to the woods and groves, there 
I to gain their bird-knowledge from the mouths of the songsters 
themselves, are content to shut themselves in their dusty 
libraries, there to weave afresh the threadbare information 
compiled by fogies of another age. Take, for instance, the case 
of the unfortunate rook. 
But there is no necessity for me to enter on a defence of the 
feathered tribes. Books, sparrows, and bullfinches, take heart. 
Those doughty champions, Jesse, Bechstien, Adams, and Kidd, 
have entered the lists on your behalf, and in their hands I am 
content to leave you. 
Simply, then, I assert that the bullfinch is not nearly so bad 
* a fellow as he is reputed. A friend of mine who owns one of 
the best fruit- gardens in Kent, who, moreover, is noted for the 
perfection of his annual crop of peaches, apricots, &c., encourages 
bullfinches, about his grounds. I must say that at first I 
thought their behaviour in the fruit-trees suspicious, but my 
friend, to settle the point, so far outraged his better nature, as 
to fetch his gun and shoot down a full-grown able-bodied bull- 
finch. We dissected him, and, to my surprise and pleasure, his 
stomach was found to be filled almost entirely with grubs and 
insects. By-the-bye, I wonder if the bullfinch’s rakish appear- 
ance first put it into folks’ heads that he was a robber P In the 
“ good old times,” you know it was not uncommon for masked 
and handsomely-dressed thieves to stop and rob honest folk on 
the highway : “ Bully,” with his jet-black mask, his hawk -beak, 
bold eyes, and dashing crimson waistcoat, must have much 
| resembled one of these gentry. 
Bullfinch Nesting. — Seek either in the lower branches of 
trees or in the tops of tall bushes — especially the whitethorn — 
for the bullfinch’s nest. It is a very simple affair, being composed 
of twigs, fibres of root, and moss, carelessly wove together. 
They breed twice or three times in the course of the year, laying 
each time four or five bluish-white eggs, speckled with red and 
purple blotches, mostly at the larger end of the egg. As the 
bird begins to build at the end of April, or the beginning of 
May, the best time to go nesting is from the 10th to the 20th 
of June, when the nestlings will be from a week to a fortnight 
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