A Sleep - breaking Chaffinch A quaint S.O.S. for advice reaches me
from Sussex, thus : " Could you help us ? Since the last week of January, we have been dis- turbed by a chaffinch. He pecks at our windows from about 5.30 a.m. to lunch-time—hardly ever later. He makes such a noise it is impossible to sleep. He also hurls his body against the panes. We feed the birds outside the kitchen, but he does not peck the panes there. He goes from one bedroom to the others, hall, and both sitting-rooms. The windows are covered with beak and wing marks and never look clean. We put out things to scare him, but it is all of no use." Such curious manias, if in a less aggravated form, are not rare. The usual explanation is that the bird sees either flies on the inside of the pane, or a reflection of himself. The reflec- tion is the most plausible theorf. It might very well annoy an abnormally pugnacious bird. Such a reflection might very well appear only at certain hours of the day. It seems to be always the more pugnacious sex that does these things. The counterfeit presentment of a cat has been suggested as a cure.
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