With respect to the song of the Greenfinch, I find it so admirably described by the Rev. C. A. Johneag
his ‘ British Birds in their Haunts,’ that I cannot possibly do better than give the passage entire :—** The
lively greenish yellow tint of the plumage on its throat ae ee sufficientally Se the Greenfinch
from any other British bird; and its note, when once identified, can be confounded with no other song,
Let any person who wishes to obtain a sight of one, walk anywhere in the country ee there are trees,
on a bright sunny day in May or June, and listen to a monotonous long-drawn croak, trying to pronounce
the syllable ‘twe-e-e.” No matter what other birds may be tuning their lays, the harsh monotone of the
Greenfneh, if one be near, will be heard among them, harmonizing with none, and suggestive of heat and
weariness. In a few seconds it will be repeated, without a shadow of variation either in tone or duration ;
and, if it be traced out, the author of the noise (music I cannot call it) will be discovered perched among the
branches of a moderately high tree, repeating his mournful ditty with extreme complacency for an hour
together. Very often it takes advantage of the midday silence of the groves, and p!pes away mau any
other competitor than the Yellow-Hammer, whose song, like his own, is the constant accompaniment of
sultry weather. The Greenfinch has another note, which is heard most frequently, but not exclusively, in
spring. This is a simple plaintive chirp, which may be easily imitated by human whistling : it resembles
somewhat one of the call-notes of the Canary-bird or Brown Linnet, and, being full and sweet, harmonizes
with the woodland chorus far better than the monontonous croak described above. Another of the notes is
a double one, and closely resembles that of the ‘ Pee-wit ;’ hence it is called, in some places, < Pee-sweep.’”

We learn from Mr. George Dawson Rowley’s communication to ‘The Ibis’ for 1862, p- 384, that the
Greenfinch is one of the few Fringilline birds included among the foster-parents of the parasitical Cuckoo.

The situations resorted to for the purpose of nesting have been already mentioned ; with regard to the
nests themselves, they vary greatly in the materials of which they are composed, as will be seen from
Thompson’s description of one found by him in Ireland, Macgillivray’s record of another taken by him in
Scotland, and two or three by myself in England

‘‘A nest,” says Thompson, “found in a beech hedge in the wild district, near Belfast, above mentioned,
was so tastefully lined as to be considered worth preserving. Outwardly it was constructed of roots inter-
woven with mosses; but mixed with black and white hairs in the lining were swans-down and thistle-seed,
this last being evidently made use of on account of its plumed appendages, all of which remained attached
to the seed.”

The Scotch nest is described by Macgillivray as ‘* of good workmanship, being composed externally of
fibrous roots, slender twigs, and straws, internally of finer materials of the same kind, intermixed with moss,

and lined with hair of different kinds.”

A nest, taken by myself near London, was built almost entirely of wool mixed with moss, a few twigs
being interwoven on the outside; while internally it was composed of very fine rootlets, wool, and a few
feathers. A second, in the garden of John Noble Esq., at Berry Hill, Taplow, had an outer frame-
work of roughly interlaced roots, to which succeeded a course of closely interwoven fine rootlets and moss
sparsely lined with horse-hair.

The eggs, which are from four to six in number, are of a bluish white, spotted at the larger end with
purplish grey and blackish brown, and are about nine or ten lines in length, by six or seven in breadth.

“Although,” says Thompson, “the Greenfinch cannot strictly be said to build in company, yet as many
as twenty nests may occasionally be found in a moderate-sized shrubbery, and not unfrequently on the
same plant.”

The food of the Greenfinch consists of the seeds of various grasess, especially the cultivated kinds, and
other plants. Occasionally the bird becomes troublesome by resorting to fields of newly sown wheat; but
Thompson tells us that it is “much fonder of the seed of the corn-marygold (Chrysanthemum segetum)
than of the grain among which that handsome weed grows.”

The sexes differ but little in their colouring, the general distribution of the tints being the same; but
those of the female are less brilliant than those of the male, and the yellow of her undersurface does not extend
on to the flanks. In spring the bill is nearly white, especially the basal portion of the under mandible, the

tips and the culmen being clouded with a dusky hue. The nestlings are rendered conspicuous by the stria-

tion of the feathers of the undersurface ; these feathers are changed at an early period in the autumn, when

the young brood very closely resemble their parents in their winter dress,

The Plate represents an adult of each sex and a nest of young bir

ds on a branch of the pink-flowering May,
all of the natural size.