Although I have never myself seen a goldfinch in the garden, they have been seen here, and on the rough ground near the Ship Canal they are not uncommon, indeed, I have heard of several shillings a week being made by birds that have been caught there in spite of County Council orders. They are usually known here as "red linnets," but another Cheshire name for them is "nickers." Greenfinches (green linnets in Cheshire) abound; in early spring they are more than usually conspicuous, as in their brightest feather they pursue one another in and out among the hollies and dark yew hedges. Though then less evident to the eye, throughout the summer they let us know by their unmistakable and wearisome notes that they are with us still. As early as April 29th, in 1890, I watched a greenfinch on a thorn opposite my window feeding what appeared to be a fully-fledged young one. It was pumping up the food from its craw, in the same way that a pigeon does. The end of April is so unusually early for a greenfinch family to have flown, that perhaps it was only another instance of delicate marital attention, such as I have noticed in the case of robins and tits. In February, 1893, a hen hawfinch was shown me. It had just been shot in the village, and in 1894 I heard of a nest in the gardens at Lymm Hall, rather more than two miles away. My wife told me one morning in October, 1910, that she had seen on a tree near her window a thick-set bird with a big head and short tail and neck, whose colour she described as some shades of brown. Two or three little birds appeared to be mobbing it, and it kept pecking at them like a parrot. She only saw it for a minute or two, before it flew away round the corner of the house. It altogether sounds as though it might have been a hawfinch. House-sparrows abound here, and are interesting and amusing to the unprejudiced looker-on who doesn't suffer from their depredations. There is no denying that sparrows are vulgar, and bold and pushing, or that they are tiresomely persevering in the mischief that they do. They are coarsely built and have no song, while their monotonous chirp is distracting, but they have that which for the race of life stands them in more stead than either beauty or musical talent; they have courage and intelligence, a wonderful power of adapting themselves to circumstances and a sound healthy constitution, with a digestion that an ostrich might envy.