Page:The Zoologist, 1st series, vol 1 (1843).djvu/329

Rh The Twite. A few twites or mountain linnets assist the grey species in clearing our stubbles of the seeds of obnoxious weeds during winter, but I am not aware that they do any harm to our crops in autumn.

The Greenfinch. Even the least attentive observer of living Nature cannot fail to remark the fitful, frolicsome flight of the green linnet, during the breeding season; how he circles and plunges about the elm trees in May and June, rifling their seed-bunches, and filling the air with his garrulous song. During the summer months it subsists largely upon insects and their larvae, as well as upon the downy seeds of the groundsel and dandelion, alighting adroitly upon the stems, bearing them to the earth, and feasting at its leisure. Turnipseed, and the seeds of the chickweed, charlocks and various grasses, &c, also enter into their bill of fare, till the crops of wheat and oats begin to ripen, when they occasionally do some damage along the borders of the fields, but when the grain is cut and carried they search the stubbles in large flocks, which are fully as animated and as amusing in their habits as those of the grey linnet. Green linnets may be daily seen in our yards all the year round, though of course they are most abundant during the inclement months of winter, when they pilfer the exposed ears of corn from the sides of the stacks, and search the cattle-yards, and by the barn-door.

The Bunting or Corn Bunting. There is a fact connected with the local distribution of the corn bunting which puzzles me very much. It is abundant on the sunny-side hills which divide our valley from that of the Tyne, also on some high grounds to the westward, and yet it is only known as a rare straggler on this farm, and I have only seen it three or four times in the stack-yard. However, I am sufficiently acquainted with its habits to be able to say that it feeds largely upon insects, small seeds and grain, and that it frequents the neighbouring stack-yards all the year round. Mr. Knapp, in his very pleasant 'Journal of a Naturalist,' accuses this bird of doing much damage to ricks or stacks of barley, by pulling out the straws to get at the ears: now I candidly confess that, along with all my countrymen to whom I have mentioned this statement, I was sceptical of its accuracy. However, I.thought it unfair to pass an opinion on the same, until I had made enquiries about the method in which stacks are built in Gloucestershire; so I applied to a relation, who has resided for a few months in Mr. Knapp's neighbourhood, and an answer has been returned that oats and barley are never bound into sheaves, but are harvested like hay. It affords me very sincere delight to be able to