much gesticulation—the feathers being puffed out and the
head sloped on one side or the other, while the whole body
throbs with each note, and the tail is swung laterally as
though to mark the time. Both sexes are said to sing.
The call-note, which is very frequently uttered, is soft and
plaintive. As a cage-bird the Bullfinch is pi’incipally prized
for its power of imitating a tune played to it on a flageolet
or on what is called a iff bird-organ.” In Germany the art
of teaching this species to utter unnatural strains, and of
thus perverting an animal into an indifferent musical
instrument, is found to he lucrative and is accordingly extensively
practised.
The Bullfinch is commonly dispersed in suitable localities
throughout Great Britain, and, according to Thompson, it is
met with in every county, though at the same time is rather
scarce, in Ireland. It is not recorded from any of the
Hebrides, and an example, obtained at Lopness in 1809, is
the only one said to have appeared in Orkney. In Shetland,
in October 1863, Saxby saw a female at Halligarth, which
was afterwards shot and came into his possession. On the
continent its distribution is somewhat hard to trace, for the
form of Bullfinch which inhabits Northern and Eastern
Europe is a decidedly larger bird, the Pyrrhula major of
the eldest Brehm (Handb. Yog. Deutschl. p. 252), and the
occurrence of the true P. europcea in Scandinavia, Russia or
the Turkish dominions is very doubtful. It breeds however
in Silesia, Bohemia and many districts of Germany, mostly
in the hilly country, hut towards the western limits of that
empire also in the wooded lowlands, while in winter it seems
to occur pretty generally. Following it further to the southward,
it is also found in Styria and Switzerland, as well as
in the beech-region of the mountains of Northern and
Central Italy, whence it even occasionally penetrates to
Sicily, and, though very rarely, has reached Malta. Loche
found two examples in the market at Algiers (Expl. Sc. de
l’Alg. Ois. i. p. 160). It inhabits parts of Holland, Belgium
and the whole of France, and probably also the north,
though it seems not as yet to have been observed in the
BULLFINCH. 171
south, of Spain. It is common in the north of Portugal, hut
is seldom seen in the southern provinces of that country.
In the adult male the hill is black : the irides dark brown:
the lores and head above the eyes and ear-coverts deep black
glossed with steel-blue ; nape, hack and lesser wing-coverts,
dark smoky-grey; the greater wing-coverts glossy blue-black,
tipped with light ashy-grey, forming a conspicuous bar across
the wing; the primaries dusky, the other wing-quills black,
glossed with steel-blue, hut the innermost tertial has the
greater part of the outer weh fine tile-red; the rump pure
white | upper tail-coverts and tail glossy blue-black; the chin
black; ear-coverts, sides of the neck, throat, breast and
belly, tile-red; tibial feathers, vent and lower tail-coverts
dull white; axillary plumes and inner wing-coverts glossy
greyish-white ; wings-quills glossy grey and tail-quills glossy
greyish-black beneath : legs and toes purplish-brown ; claws
dark brown.
The whole length is rather more than six inches; from
the carpal joint to the tip of the wing, three inches and one-
eighth : the fourth, third and second primaries, successively
shorter than the fifth, which is the longest in the wing; the
second and sixth being equal, and the first apparently
wanting : the tail nearly even.
The female has the grey of the hack mixed with brown,
and beneath, where the male is red, is of a warm mouse-
colour ; the innermost tertial is slightly tinged with red; the
head, wings and tail, not quite so deep or so glossy a black.
The young on leaving the nest much resemble the female,
hut have the head coloured like the hack; the hai on the
wing is of a light ochreous-hrown, and the lower parts of
the body are lighter and tinged with ochreous, especially on
the belly. The black cap is assumed at the first moult, and
the cocks about the same time, or soon after, lose the dull
plumage of the breast which is replaced by the brightly-
tinted feathers that characterize the adults of their sex.