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Updated: June 15, 2025
But now when I listened to the greenfinches in the village elms and hedgerows, if by chance a few sparrows burst out in loud gratulatory notes, the sounds they emitted appeared coarse, and I wished the chirrupers away.
The dealers would only take a few, and they were worth nothing no more than greenfinches and yellow-hammers.
Because we see birds of certain kinds near our farms, gardens, and hedges it does not follow that these are those which were there in summer and spring. Such common finches as the greenfinches and chaffinches migrate in immense flocks, and over vast distances, considering their short wings and small size. In the gardens and shrubberies round the houses the parent robins stay.
I have tamed wilder birds than greenfinches, in Italy I have tamed goldfinches, blackcaps, and even an oriole. And if you have once tamed a bird, and made him your friend, he never forgets you. Season after season, when he returns from his migration, he recognises you, and takes up the friendship where it was put down.
From the south wind that breathed a century and a half ago over the green wheat. From the perfume of the growing grasses waving over honey-laden clover and laughing veronica, hiding the greenfinches, baffling the bee. From rose-loved hedges, woodbine, and cornflower azure-blue, where yellowing wheat-stalks crowd up under the shadow of green firs.
Hundreds of starlings were chattering in the fir-trees, and flying round the branches with incessant motion. In the thick hedge which enclosed it there were crowds of greenfinches, goldfinches, chaffinches, yellow-hammers, and sparrows, who never ceased talking.
Red squirrels, gray squirrels, gambolling among the boughs, playing with acorns and hazelnuts; thrushes, blackbirds, nightingales, and greenfinches, chirruping and twittering, were all the game I had. In vain we endeavour to bring high nobility and plain gentry into one class. They are divided by the game-park.
Along the edge of the path, where the dandelions and plantains are thick with seed, the greenfinches will come down and select those they like best: this they often do by the footpath beside the road. Lastly, the apples become red; the beech in the corner has an orange spray, and cones hang long and brown upon the spruce. The thrushes after silence sing again, and autumn approaches.
An incident which happened in the spring of 1917 will serve to make this clear. A flock of some thirty Yellow Buntings, Greenfinches, and Chaffinches were feeding in one corner of a field which had recently been sown with barley. As they sought their food they wandered outwards into the middle of the field, and in so doing, passed across the territory of a Skylark.
In those happy days when the discovery of a nest marked a red-letter day, I never saw my Sparrows or Greenfinches refuse a Locust because he was not moving, or a Fly because she was dead. Any mouthful that does not kick is eagerly accepted, provided that it be fresh and pleasant to the taste.
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