Part 9

It is common nearly all over the country--though I have never met with it in either the Outer Hebrides or the Shetlands--inhabiting gardens, orchards, hedgerows, and woods.

Some people do not care for the song of the Hedge Sparrow, but I must admit that I am an admirer of this wee brown bird’s vocal accomplishments. Its notes, although soft and lacking in variety, are sweet and always have the true ring of joy and hope in them. They seem to herald the coming of spring.

This species has a peculiar habit of flirting or shuffling its wings, hence the very appropriate local name before mentioned. Its call note is a plaintive peep, peep.

The Hedge Sparrow, of course, stays with us all the year round, and in the winter hops quietly about in gardens, round fowl-houses and sinks, diligently picking up the very tiniest particles of food that other birds either do not see or consider beneath their attention. When disturbed it timidly retires beneath some bush or hedge, and waits until all is quiet, when it comes forth again with a gentleness and modesty that win it a great deal of sympathy during hard weather.

It breeds early, and hides its nest, as carefully as circumstances will permit, in evergreens and thick hedgerows. Although such a common species, it has one habit which is not often mentioned in books. When laying it frequently covers over its eggs with part of the lining of the nest before leaving them.

On one occasion I photographed a Dunnock sitting on her nest in a bramble bush, and wishing for a different view of her returned the following morning in order to secure it. When I approached the place I observed the bird sitting at home, but in endeavouring to get close to her with my apparatus I frightened her off. Pathetically enough, upon looking into the structure, I discovered that the bird had been sitting inside an absolutely empty home.

The Hedge Sparrow makes her nest of slender twigs, in limited numbers--sometimes these are not employed at all--rootlets, dead grass, and moss, with an inner lining of wool, hair, and feathers. The lining frequently consists of no other materials than moss and cowhair.

The eggs number from four to six, and are turquoise-blue in colour and unspotted.

Two, and even three, broods are reared in a season. Nests may be found as early as March and as late as the end of July.

=THE GREENFINCH.=

The Greenfinch, or Green Linnet as it is called in many parts of the country, is a thick-set little bird, about six inches, of a yellowish-green colour, shaded with ash-grey above, and bright yellow, slightly tinged with ash-grey, on its under parts. The female is not quite as large as her mate, and much duller in colour.

This species is common in nearly all parts of the country where there are cultivated fields, small woods, hedgerows, and gardens. In fact, I should say that it ranks next to the Common Sparrow amongst the finches in point of numbers.

Although a somewhat selfish bird, full of threats and warlike attitudes when a favourite item of food--such as a sunflower head full of seeds--has been discovered, it is sociable to a great extent, even during the breeding season. I have found three or four nests within a yard or two of each other in a hedgerow, and Mr. Hudson says that two or three may sometimes be found even on the same branch.

The nest is situated in hedgerows, gorse bushes, yew, holly, ivy, and other evergreens, in orchards, gardens, shrubberies, and on commons, and when compared with that of the Chaffinch is a rather large and slovenly structure formed of slender, dead twigs, rootlets, grass, and moss lined with hair, down, and feathers.

The eggs, numbering from four to six, are white, pale grey, or white tinged with blue, spotted principally round the larger end with reddish-brown and purplish-grey.

The male Greenfinch, although not a great feathered vocalist, has some very pleasant notes, which he trills by the half-hour together. In the early part of the breeding season he sings on the wing, but later on he grows less energetic, and is content to deliver his oft-repeated lay from some favourite treetop. Individuals differ in the quality of their notes.

In confinement the Greenfinch soon becomes very tame and docile, and is appreciated on this account, and also for its ability to imitate the notes of other species.

The call-note is a prolonged twe-e-er, and when the nest is visited the members of this species utter a very melancholy one sounding like tway.

In winter Greenfinches congregate in small flocks, and hunt for seeds in stubble fields and farmyards. They will associate with Sparrows, Linnets, and Chaffinches, and during the winter months they come regularly to my garden to take their share of corn, sunflower seeds, and other food which is provided every morning for the consumption of all feathered friends. It is amusing to see one of these birds rolling a grain of Indian corn about between its short, stout mandibles, gradually reducing it to pieces small enough to be swallowed, and cleverly rejecting the thin husk in which it is enfolded, and allowing it to flutter to the ground.

=THE DARTFORD WARBLER.=

This bird received its popular name on account of the fact that it was first observed near Dartford in Kent in 1773. It is also known by the very appropriate name of Furze Wren in some parts of the country, because it has a habit of cocking its long tail like a Common Wren and is very partial to thick growths of furze.

The Dartford Warbler is about five inches long, and in addition to its habit of cocking its tail, which measures nearly half its entire length, possesses the lark-like power of erecting the feathers on the top of its head so as to form a kind of crest. On his upper parts the male is greyish-black, the wings and tail being blackish-brown and the outside feathers of the latter broadly tipped with grey; chin, throat, breast, and sides chestnut-brown; under parts white, excepting at the base of the tail, where they are grey. The female is browner on her upper parts and lighter underneath.

Furze-clad commons along the south coast of England form the home of this rare, shy, and interesting species, which there is every reason to fear is growing still rarer owing to the damage done to it by such severe winters as those of 1881 and 1895 and the depredations of egg collectors.

Although a very difficult bird to observe, and therefore liable to be overlooked, particularly during dull, wet weather, when it does not show itself on the tops of furze bushes, there is every reason to fear that it has quite vanished from many of its old Surrey and Sussex haunts, where I have sought for it day after day in vain. For obvious reasons I cannot divulge the whereabouts of the place where our photograph of the adult male opposite was secured, by the kind assistance of a friend who fed the bird on mealworms at the same place, close to his nest and young ones, morning by morning until he got into the habit of visiting the top of that particular furze bush regularly in search of his breakfast.

The nest is built in the lower parts of thick furze bushes, and is composed of small, slender branches of furze, grass stalks, bits of moss, and wool, with an inner lining of fine grass and sometimes a few hairs.

The eggs number four or five, greenish- or buffish-white in ground colour, speckled all over with dark olive-brown, and underlying markings of grey.

Although a bird of weak flight, the Furze Wren is very active and nimble when searching from bush to bush for its food, which consists of flies, moths, spiders, caterpillars, and other small deer.

It has a hurried little song, which has been described as “shrill and piping” by one authority, and “an angry, impatient ditty, for ever the same,” by another. Early in the season it is delivered whilst the singer is hovering in the air like a Whitethroat, moving his head from side to side and waving his tail in all directions, but later more soberly from the topmost branch of some furze bush. The slightest disturbance instantly silences the vocalist, and he drops straight into the hiding afforded by the thick cover below.