Finch Fidelity
How faithful year after year are certain birds to certain places ! Last week a very earnest observer of birds called on me and said that he had been watching a small group of hawfinches. I responded by saying that the species were always to be found in winter at the edge of an old rectory garden some two miles away from my house ; and described the trees that they haunted. He said: "That was the exact place where I saw them." The young observer had been away from England (in Africa and Palestine) since the beginning of the war. My 'view was the hawfinches were attracted by the seed of some hornbeams, a tree that flourishes thereabouts. His view was that yew-berries were the lure. Most birds like yew-berries, especially missel-thrushes. Haw- finches, in my experience, have few rivals in their search for the "keys " of the hornbeam.
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