HAWFINCHES.
[To sae EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR ,—I think the notification by your correspondent of the hawfinch as a rara avis ought not to pass without comment, for during the last twenty years or more I knew of its being found in localities which are widespread. In 1900, during summer, I saw the bird in a Radnorshire wood; a few years after I saw a dead hawfinch picked up in a garden at Bowdon, a suburb within seven miles of Manchester Exchange; while last month one was fed in a garden close to houses at Harpenden, a town of 6,000 inhabitants between Luton and St. Albans. " Semper Discens" will find the hawfinch described and depicted in Hudson's British Birds, also a coloured head and other informa- tion in Hastings' Handbook of British Birds.—I am, Sir, he., Salcombe, February 27th. LIONEL B. Wears.
P.8.—In a storm of wind and rain yesterday there arrived a hoopoe; jackdaws mobbed the strange visitor. It was seen again this morning.
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