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Updated: June 29, 2025
Divided between the two nets are the cages of the decoy-birds Linnets and Chaffinches, Greenfinches and Yellowhammers, Buntings and Ortolans sharp-eared creatures which, on perceiving the distant passage of a flock of their own kind, forthwith utter a short calling note. One of them, the Sambe, an irresistible tempter, hops about and flaps his wings in apparent freedom.
In the trees above his head the thrushes and chaffinches were singing; and just before him, diminished to a mere speck in the boundless blue, a lark poured forth his "flood of delirious music." The Dominican paused and rested on his staff while he listened. "Sing, happy birds!" he said, when at length the lark's song was over, and the bird had come down to earth again.
In summer the leaves of the aspen rustled pleasantly, there was the tinkle of falling water over a hatch, thrushes sang and blackbirds whistled, greenfinches laughed in their talk to each other. The commonplace dusty road was commonplace no longer. In the dust was the mark of the chaffinches' little feet; the white light rendered even the dust brighter to look on.
The birds were waking sleepily. Chaffinches began their clear, short, natural bursts of song. "CHURR!" said the last barn owl as he betook himself to bed. The first rook sailed slowly overhead from Hensol wood. He was seeking the early worm. The green lake in the east was spreading and taking a roseate tinge just where it touched the pines on the rugged hillside.
A few more steps and I came upon as pretty a little scene in bird life as one could wish for: twenty to twenty-five small birds of different species tits, wrens, dunnocks, thrushes, blackbirds, chaffinches, yellowhammers were congregated on the lower outside twigs of a bramble bush and on the bare ground beside it close to the foot of the wall.
But now, in the path before the arbour, all facing towards it, there must have been a score of birds three or four sparrows, a pair of chaffinches, and then greenfinches, greenfinches, greenfinches. They were all facing expectantly towards the arbour, hopping towards it, hesitating, hopping on again, coming nearer, nearer.
"Yes, I like the small eggs; I like them very much better than larger ones. You have no idea how delicate an omelette is, if made of four or five hundred eggs of linnets, chaffinches, starlings, blackbirds, and thrushes." "But five hundred eggs is perfectly monstrous!" "A salad-bowl will hold them easily enough," said Porthos.
Chaffinches are beginning to pipe more solitarily to each other in the tall elms. A few weeks ago they fluttered everywhere in companies, occupying now a hedge, now a road, and now a tree. The naturalists tell us that these winter companies of chaffinches are usually composed of birds of one sex only, the males consorting together for the time as in a boys' school.
But as they cannot agree, the hawk, and the cat, and the crow do as they like. For the chaffinches all fight one another, you heard them challenging, and saw them go to battle, and then when at last they leave off and are good fellows again, they all flock together and will have nothing to do with the goldfinches, or the blackbirds.
Many of the Warblers display irritation when approached by other birds which we should scarcely expect would arouse their hostility. The Hedge-Sparrow, for example, is frequently regarded with suspicion, and it is by no means unusual to see it attacked by so small a bird as the Chiffchaff. The Wood-Warbler is also pugnacious, and will even attack a pair of Chaffinches.
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