Greenfinch

“ In winter these birds accompany other Finches and form with them flocks of varying sizes, but in the spring the flocks disperse, and the Greenfinch, in common with other units of the flock, alters its mode of life. But whereas the Chaffinch or the Bunting begins to acquire its territory in February, the Greenfinch only does so in April. When the organic changes do at length begin to make themselves felt, the male seeks a position of its own, and having found one remains there, uttering its characteristic call. ”

“ Among the apple blossoms below, soft cadences are borne in the sunshine—the goldfinches cannot cease the telling of their happiness. A greenfinch answers with wistful, long-drawn note, and a corn bunting repeats his song again and again. Primroses, daisies, and the scentless violet grow on the turf [25] under the spinney, where the larches have concealed their brittleness with emerald buds. A high twitter comes from one, and almost immediately a bird smaller than a wren flits moth-like to the ground. ”

“ The Greenfinch generally selects some small coppice or garden for its residence, and passes the entire day in flitting from place to place, or upon the ground, whither it resorts in search of food. At night it seeks a shelter in the branches of some thickly-foliaged tree. Although clumsy in appearance it is a lively, active bird, light and easy in all its movements. ”

“ Watching the line of the hedge, about every two minutes, either near at hand or yonder a bird darts out just at the level of the grass, hovers a second with labouring wings, and returns as swiftly to the cover. Sometimes it is a flycatcher, sometimes a greenfinch, or chaffinch, now and then a robin, in one place a shrike, perhaps another is a redstart. They are flyfishing all of them, seizing insects from the sorrel tips and grass, as the kingfisher takes a roach from the water. ”

“ Some of them, I am told, never catch their birds at all, but purchase them.
The greenfinch is the bird on which these men’s art is most commonly practised, its light-coloured plumage suiting it to their purposes. I have heard these people styled “bird-swindlers,” but by street-traders I heard them called “bird-duffers,” yet there appears to be no very distinctive name for them. They are nearly all men, as is the case in the bird trade generally, although the wives may occasionally assist in the street-sale. The means of deception, as regards the greenfinch especially, are from paint. ”

“ The Greenfinch and Linnet exist in fair numbers. I watched a pair of Goldfinches feeding their young in a nest built in an old plum-tree in a garden hedge at Efail-newydd, and saw a pair at Llanbedrog, and other birds at Pwllheli. Mr. Coward has seen a few at Abersoch, so it is probably not uncommon. The House-Sparrow would not seem numerous to anyone coming from a wheat-growing country, there being too little corn for it; but it long ago extended its range into the utmost limits of Lleyn. ”

“ Let any one who wishes to obtain a sight of one, walk anywhere in the country where there are trees, on a bright sunny day in May or June, and listen for a monotonous long-drawn croak, trying to pronounce the syllable 'twe-e-e' or 'bree-eze'. No matter what other birds may be tuning their lays, the harsh monotone of the Greenfinch, if one be near, will be heard among them, harmonizing with none, and suggestive of heat and weariness. ”

“ Yellowish green variegated with yellow and ash-grey. Length, six inches.
It has been a subject of mild wonder to me that the greenfinch is not more a favourite than I find him; for he is almost more with us than any other finch, and, in most cases, to know a bird well is to like it. Few of our eighteen finches can be seen and heard close to our houses. The brambling, siskin, redpoll, crossbill, and twite are scattered about the country in the cold and songless season; in summer we see little or nothing of them. The linnet is fairly abundant, but must be looked for on waste lands and commons ”

“ The Greenfinch is much sought after on account of the delicacy of its flesh, but we cannot recommend it as suitable for domestication, as its song is very insignificant, and its disposition so quarrelsome that it will not live in peace with others of its race; on the other hand, we must mention that few species adapt themselves so readily to life in a cage. ”

“ The Greenfinch inhabits the whole of Europe, and a large portion of Asia, with the exception of the most northerly countries: it is also numerous in Spain, but quite unknown in Siberia. Everywhere it is found about pasture-land, and such localities as are at no great distance from human habitations; it avoids all thickly-wooded places, and usually lives in pairs or small parties, the latter increasing into large flocks only during their passage from one country to another, at which times they associate freely with many other small birds of kindred habits. ”

“ I have occasionally watched the great-tit in our own fir-plantations, but have not yet seen him attacking the cones, though the coal-tit, as I believe, does so. For the greenfinch I can only say that I should not have thought it of him, nor is he often to be seen in such places. The nut-hatch is not common where I live. ”

“ They fly compactly, with an undulating motion, similar to that of the Common Greenfinch of Europe. They alight all at once, and after a moment of rest, and as if frightened, all take to wing again, make a circuit of no great extent, and return to the tree from which they had thus started, or settle upon one near it. ”

“ Greenfinch Nesting in Furze (Zool. 2nd ser. 5120) .—In the summer of 1875 I found several nests of the Greenfinch in some tall furze bushes situated outside the wall of a kitchen garden, and one nest— containing four young ones— was almost entirely constructed of the silky catkins of the sallow, which the parent birds must have brought from some considerable distance, as no sallows are growing near the spot. ”

“ Eggs bluish white, speckled and spotted with purplish grey and dark brown.
The Greenfinch, or Green Linnet, is one of our most generally diffused birds. No bird is a more frequent inhabitant of country gardens during the summer than this, being attracted, it would seem, not so much by the prospect of abundance of food, as by its fondness for building its nest in evergreens and the thick hedges of shrubberies. The lively greenish yellow tint of the plumage on its throat and breast sufficiently distinguish it from any other British bird ”

“ It mounts up, then sinks, then mounts, and so on alternately, "singing all the time very melodiously, but with a weaker strain than that favorite bird" (the British Skylark) .
Four introduced Finches have succeeded in establishing themselves in Southern Australia. The Greenfinch is spreading, though slowly. A specimen was recently sent in from Horsham, in Western Victoria. The Goldfinch, "one of the prettiest birds in Britain," is spreading rapidly. It is often to be seen on thistles, for it destroys their seeds. ”

“ If it is feared that it may be caught in a neighbouring area or barn-floor trap, it may be frightened from this snare in future, by stretching a net once, in the orchard or garden near. The greenfinch is the best for this manœuvre, as it is extremely fond of hemp seed, is more rarely taken, and returns less wild than the chaffinch. The birds that enjoy their liberty in the summer sing more finely than without this advantage, and, what is almost incredible, though taken to a distance of several leagues, they have always found their master’s house again48. ”

“ The greenfinches are very sociable in disposition, and all the summer long, even when they are engaged in breeding, they may be seen in parties of three, or four, or half a dozen; two or three nests are often found on the same branch, or in close proximity. The passions of jealousy and anger, so common among birds in the pairing season, seem not to exist in this species. As a songster he cannot compare with the linnet, the chaffinch, and the goldfinch, but he probably produces more pleasant sound than any other finch, unless we include the chirruping of the sparrow. ”

“ In winter, Greenfinches congregate in large numbers, and feed together on the seeds of various weeds in stubble fields, or not unfrequently they descend on newly-sown fields of wheat, where they are very troublesome. If disturbed, they rise simultaneously, fly rapidly only a few feet from the ground to another part of the field, but before they alight wheel about several times with singular precision of movement, disappearing from the sight and reappearing according as the dark or light portion of their plumage is turned towards the spectator ”

“ It walks with a show of dignity when on the ground, erecting its crest from time to time. In spring the male utters a note not unlike the coo of a Wood-pigeon, which it repeats several times, and at other seasons it occasionally emits a sound something like the shrill note of the Greenfinch. But it is no musician and is as little anxious to be heard as seen. The nest is a simple structure composed of a few scraps of dried grass and feathers, and contains from four to six eggs. ”

“ I have seen a large number of hybrid Finches, and have on many occasions examined birds described as crosses between "Bullfinch and Goldfinch,"
"Bullfinch and Linnet," and (occasionally) "Bullfinch and Redpoll" and "Bullfinch and Greenfinch"; but it is just possible that in each of these cases the order in which the parents' names were given should have been reversed. If it be the fact that no hybrids have been raised from the cock Bullfinch, it is very curious. ”

“ Susanna, under her white sunshade, laughed, softly, victoriously.
"Speaking with all moderation," he declared, "it is the most marvellous performance I have ever witnessed. If it had been a sparrow—or a pigeon—but—a greenfinch—!"
"There are very few birds that can't be tamed," she said. "You 've only got to familiarise them with your presence at a certain spot at a certain hour, and keep very still, and be very, very gentle in your movements, and croon to them, and bring them food. I have tamed wilder birds than greenfinches, in Italy—I have tamed goldfinches, blackcaps, and even an oriole. ”

“ Yes, and the beautiful bullfinch and the gaudy goldfinch as well, to say nothing of the siskin and canary, so it cannot be plebeian. The tree sparrow makes a nice wee pet, very loving and gentle, and not at all particular as to food. It likes canary-seed, but insects and worms as well, and it is not shy at picking a morsel of sugar, nor a tiny bit of bread and butter.
There were more birds of the same family that haunted this auld kirkyard. The greenfinch or green-grosbeak used to flit hither and thither among the ivy like a tiny streak of lightning, and the pretty wee redpole was also there. ”

“ Of finches of the homestead that possess beauty and melody there are only two—the chaffinch and the greenfinch; and it is the fact that most people have a great esteem for the first, and pay but very slight attention to the second. ”

“ As the light begins to creep upon the darkness and the world to grow more and more white, the arrivals commence. First a few greenfinches—principally hens—fly down upon the heap, then chaffinches, both cocks and hens, but hens predominating, with a few yellow-hammers, mostly of immature plumage, and a hedge-sparrow or two. These birds come and go independently for some little time, and it is not till the morning has grown lighter that they begin to form a band, in the sense not of their numbers only, but also of their actions. ”

“ With a new intense interest I watched the swifts careering through the air, and listened to their shrill screams. It was the same with all the birds, even the commonest—the robin, blue tit, martin, and sparrow. In the evening I stood motionless a long [Pg_289] time intently watching a small flock of greenfinches settling to roost in a hazel-hedge. From time to time they became disturbed at my presence, and fluttering up to the topmost twigs, where their forms looked almost black against the pale amber sky, they uttered their long-drawn canary-like note of alarm. ”

“ In this class are the chaffinch, the greenfinch, the linnet, the goldfinch, and the swallow. The bird that lives on insects, or [303] the insectivorous bird, has a beak that is fine and slender, in delicacy proportioned to the softness of its prey. To this number belong the nightingale, the warbler, the fallow-finch, and the wagtail. Agriculture has no better defenders against the ravages of worms than these little birds with slender beaks, voracious devourers as they are of larvæ and insects. ”

“ The Bullfinch, though much admired as a cage-bird, cannot be said to be much of a songster. It is kept more for its beauty than its music, though it is sometimes able to ‘pipe’ a very pretty tune. Now, with respect to its food. Great numbers of bullfinches are annually destroyed by our gardeners and nurserymen because they are supposed to be destructive. Now, it is a fact well known to ornithologists that, although the sparrow, greenfinch, chaffinch, wren, bullfinch, and other birds, do not themselves actually live on insects, yet these form the chief food for their young. ”

“ All the time the birds are down on the heap they are busily feeding, seeming to put their whole soul into each peck (like the single jest at the Mermaid) and all in a kind of sociable, yet but half friendly, competition with each other. Gradually they spread out a little from the heap, half-a-dozen greenfinches are amongst the straw that one has oneself pulled out from the stack, and one of them is feeding positively within three feet. ”

“ Among these we have the Greenfinch and the Goldfinch, the term Finch from the Anglo-Saxon finc, denoting a small singing bird; the Greenlet expressing a tiny green bird peculiar to South America; the Jay, a corruption of gai, its French name, alluding to its gay or showy appearance; the Blue-bird, common in the United States, the [97] upper half of which is blue; the Blackbird, so called from its sable aspect; the Starling, owing to the specks at the extremities of its feathers; the Flamingo, of South America and Africa, from its flaming colour ”