MOUNTAIN FINCH. 
65 
other species of graminivorous birds, and at other times they 
have been seen in large numbers by themselves. They are 
said to be good to eat, but to have a bitter taste. When 
alarmed, they betake themselves to trees, as do the other 
birds of the family to which they belong. They seem to be 
very easily reconciled to confinement, but the late William 
Thompson, Esq., of Belfast, relates that a pair which were 
kept in a large cage in a greenhouse with some other birds, 
made such a noise throughout moonlight nights as to disturb 
the family, and consequently they had to be removed to 
another place. Bewick says, quoting Buffon, that in France 
they appear sometimes in immense numbers, and that in 
one year they were so numerous that more than six hundred 
dozen were killed each night during the greater part of the 
winter. It is not said, however, whether this was in one 
locality, or the total produce of the whole country, which 
latter again it would be next to impossible even to arrive at 
a proximate guess at, as no previous preparation would have 
been made for taking a ‘census’ of these unexpected strangers. 
I should rather therefore imagine that they have to be set 
down as the results of the ‘long bow,’ rather than of the 
gun or the net. 
Their flight is rapid and undulated. They roost in trees, 
seeming to give a preference to plantations of fir and larch. 
The food of this species consists of grain, the seeds of the 
grasses and other plants, and beech-mast. It forages in the 
fields, in company with birds of other species, until driven by 
stress of weather and the absence of supply to the neigh¬ 
bourhood of the homestead, where it picks up anything it 
can meet with on the ground, but it does not seem to 
pilfer from the stacks. 
Its note is ordinarily a single monotonous chirp, resembling 
the syllable ‘tweet,’ but in the spring of the year it has a 
pleasing warble—a succession of low notes, ended by a more 
hoarse and protracted one. Meyer likens it to the words 
‘chip-u-way.’ 
The nest is placed in lofty fir and other trees, is formed 
of moss, and lined with wool and feathers. B. Dashwood, 
Esq., of Beccles, Suffolk, had these birds lay, in two instances, 
in the year 1839; and in the latter the eggs were hatched. 
His aviary is a large one, enclosing a considerable space of 
ground, and is surrounded with ivy, and planted inside with 
shrubs. If birds are to be kept in confinement at all, some 
