BIRD-NESTING IN FIELDS AND COMMONS. 
composed, externally, of coarse grass and twigs, neatly lined 
with finer grass-fibres and hair of the horse and cow, well 
matted together. The eggs (fig. 17), four or five in number, 
are oval in form, of a purplish-white, marked with streaks 
and a few irregular dots of black, together with some faint 
purplish-grey markings ; their length about ten-twelfths of an 
inch by eight-twelfths in diameter. 
The Greenfinch, sometimes called the green linnet, is a timid 
bird, but more easily approached than the linnet. It pairs 
and builds its nest in April, choosing the roots of a furze bush, 
a close hawthorn hedge, the lower fork of some bushy shrub, 
or even the ivy on a tree or wall, for its future habitation. The 
nest is formed of hypna or other vegetable fibre, which it 
interweaves neatly with fibrous roots and straws mixed with 
hair ; the external walls are strengthened with slender twigs ; 
and the fining is a mixture of hairs and fibrous roots and wool, 
felted together ; the whole forming a compact, well- constructed 
nest. 
The eggs (fig. 12), from four to six in number, are oval, 
about three-fourths of an inch in length, a little over half an 
inch in diameter, of a bluish or purplish white, spotted with 
purple and grey and blackish brown, more or less streaked 
with black : two broods are sometimes reared in a season. 
The Redpole, like its congeners, nestles among the brush- 
wood of the common, on the margins of streams, in rocky 
dells ; but the nest is not common. Mr. Selby describes it as 
built in a beech or low tree, and formed of moss and the stalks 
of dry grass, intermixed with the down of the catkin of the 
willow, which also forms the fining, a soft and warm receptacle 
for the eggs and young. The birds brood late in the season, 
the young ones not being fledged till the end of June. The 
eggs are four in number, of a pale bluish green, spotted with 
orange-brown towards the larger end. 
Early as we are, the Lark is before us with his matin carol. 
There it is, rising against the wind, and pouring forth its song 
without intermission ; and there it shoots away to the left, in a 
wide curve, round the wind as it were, and whirling to the 
right again before it begins its descent into that cornfield, which 
it does floating, and with expanded wings. Its note is prolonged 
and more steady ; — now it closes its wings, and down it comes 
with great rapidity, with the body slightly declining ; and now its 
wild fantasia ceases, as it drops on the ground, after hovering 
a moment in the air. In the long grass near to tbe spot where 
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