Some British 
Finches. 
(150) THE BIRD WORLD. 
Sorrve British Firvches. 
With Observations Thereon. 
By J. S. CRAWFORD. 
(1 Continued from p. 113.) 
As the Chaffinch wins our admiration 
by his beauty he also commands our 
attention as the most beautiful nest- 
builder of our British birds, except, per¬ 
haps, the Long-tailed Tit. The nest is 
constructed of various coloured lichens, 
moss, wool, lined with hair and feathers, 
but a good deal depends on the locality 
as regards the materials chosen. The 
nest will often be found in the fork cf 
a fruit or other tree—sometimes in a 
hawthorn hedge. They also favour the 
fir as a nesting site, and I have also 
found it built in the ivy growing round 
the trunks of trees. It is a wonderful 
structure, comprising compactness, neat¬ 
ness, durability and beauty, and the 
bird will often weave bits of coloured 
paper, cloth, etc., in among the lichens, 
and the resemblance of the nest to hs 
surroundings is indeed wonderful, and 
the whole is a masterpiece of nest archi¬ 
tecture. 
Sense of Beauty, or Preservation — 
Which ? 
Some bird lovers form the opinion 
that it is from a sense of beauty that the 
Chaffinch builds such a pretty nest, but 
I, for one, do not share such a view, it 
being to my mind simply adaption to 
circumstances and self-preservation, and 
as one can readily understand, any 
pair of Chaffinches, building such a 
nest through a sense of beauty on their 
own part, would only compass their 
young and probably their own downfall, 
for being gaudily decorated (as some 
suppose through a sense of beauty) it 
would readily attract the attention of the 
birds’ enemies, and if not killed them¬ 
selves their young would probably be so, 
and thus the young Chaffinches would 
not live to inherit the supposed decora¬ 
tive properties of their parents. So 
from this one can understand that the 
nest must surely be built to distract and 
not to attract attention, and from this 
we see that the bird has no decorative 
instincts, but purely those of self-preser¬ 
vation, and the Chaffinch shows these 
propensities in a marked degree. The 
Chaffinch lays usually four or five eggs 
of a pale purple colour, spotted and 
streaked with dark purplish-brown, these 
marks being generally towards the larger 
end; but sometimes an egg is found 
almost devoid of colour, varying, as 
most eggs do, greatly. 
A Good Parent. 
Like most other birds the Chaffinch is 
a good parent, and what droll-looking 
youngsters young Chaffinches are, to be 
"sure. It is, indeed, a comical sight to 
come across four or five of these young 
hopefuls perched on a branch waiting, 
with but little show of patience, on their 
never-tiring mother. As already noted, 
the Chaffinch is of great service to the 
agriculturist, and, though he will occa¬ 
sionally take a few berries and a little 
garden seed, still he includes in his diet 
such destructive insects as cockchafers, 
moths, ' caterpillars, chrysalides, crane 
flies, blight, beetles, and the eggs of 
insects and the following weeds—ground¬ 
sel, chickweed, charlock, wild mustard, 
wild berries, arfd many other objection¬ 
able weeds; so, like the Goldfinch, the 
Chaffinch is a very useful bird, and 
deserves our every protection. 
In winter the sexes separate and hunt 
in flocks for food, but whether they re¬ 
sume co-habitation when spring comes 
round again it is hard to tell, but I 
would mention I have seen some flocks 
of these birds with a mixture of both 
cocks and hens. 
