The Bullfinch.
(Pyrrhula europœa.)
The Bullfinch lives in summer in the mountains, and descends in late autumn to the plains, where it meets its far bigger relatives who come to us for the winter from the Far North, and joins company with them in wood and grove and garden, even in the immediate neighbourhood of dwellings. When the sunshine glistens on frost and snow, and these splendidly coloured birds settle on a dry bough, the scene presents a lovely winter landscape the impression of which is heightened by its melancholy subdued cry, “deeu,” or “beut, beut.” In captivity it learns to sing tunes. It is easily caught, for it is incautious.
In winter it visits plants, choosing the young wild vines, buds, seeds of all kinds, berries including those of the alder, and the wayfaring tree; it does not attack weeds. In very severe winters, when starving, it will also do mischief among the buds of the fruit-trees.
It is frequently seen in winter.
The Bullfinch has been causing much dissension in and near an East Anglian district where I have lately been staying. A net had been placed over the gooseberry bushes to protect the blossom, and much indignation was caused early one morning by the sight of three lusty Bullfinches within the meshes, and a quantity of promising blossom on the ground. “There would be no gooseberries whatever, this season; it was positively unbearable; sentiment was utterly misplaced.” The three birds were caught by the hand within the net, two were put in a cage in the stable, and one was exposed in a small cage on the top of the garden wall to attract others to the like fate. The gardeners were inexorable. Madame was irritated by the sight of the rifled twigs. “And all last Sunday was spent, by the wife and me,” said the gardener, “shying stones at the rascals among the trees in our own garden.” The next day a market-gardener shot no less than six Bullfinches on his grounds.
As a rule, my friends on this estate, are extremely good to birds, and they attract them by placing breeding boxes, and supplying food in winter; but these sturdy rascals find no quarter. I pleaded hard for them, but, I fear, without result. The gooseberry blossom was certainly nearly all destroyed, but it was in a quest for the destructive larvæ of the winter moths, which make their appearance in the early spring and eat the not yet expanded buds. A fruit grower has stated that he allowed the Bullfinches to eat as much as they pleased; the crop of fruit has usually been as good as if the birds had not done any disbudding, and when, by a rare chance, the trees had borne no fruit at all, he knew it was because the trees required clearing, and the next year the crop would be all the finer. In some cases the tree appears to be entirely disbudded, and still fruit has appeared.
It is only for a short period that the Bullfinches visit the fruit trees. During the rest of the year they eat the seeds of harmful weeds—dock, thistle, groundsel, plantain; and one authority states that a single Bullfinch has been known to devour 238 seeds of the common spear-thistle in twenty minutes! A writer in the Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society say that he has seen “a small party of these birds eagerly devouring the seeds of the large sow-thistle.” A little fruit more or less in a season, in one’s own domain, is a small matter in comparison with the vast amount of noxious weeds destroyed on our fields.
The Bullfinch is an ornament in a garden. Crown, wings, and tail are shining black, and the same colour surrounds the bill; mantle a beautiful ashen-grey, rump and under tail cover snow white, breast and under-parts a fine red. In the female the under-part is ashen-grey. Bill short but very thick, at the end curved and hooked. The clutch is composed of five green eggs with purple and grey speckles. It nests in the fir woods of the mountains, at a height of about six yards; the nest is made of thin twigs and is lined with hair.
The Goldfinch (Carduélis élegans) is so well known in Great Britain that it requires little description. Unhappily for the “Proud Tailor,” as he is called in the Midlands, he has always been a favourite cage-bird, and on the South Downs Goldfinches have been captured in thousands at the times of migration, to be miserably caged in dozens for the bird dealers.
They are birds which found their food on the waste lands where large thistles used to grow, and with the improvement of these waste lands the thistles have gone, and the Goldfinches with them. Increased Bird Protection is, however, causing more Goldfinches to breed amongst us, which is a good thing for agriculture, this bird’s food consisting, as it does, of the seeds of the thistle, knap-weed, groundsel, dock, and other plants. The Goldfinch is considered to be one of the most useful of all our birds, feeding, as it does, on the seeds of noxious plants of which there is a succession all the year round. It ought to be encouraged in orchards, where it feeds its young on small caterpillars, and destroys great numbers of other insects for them.