I have seen a flock of over forty together. I had
seven nests on my premises here one summer; they go on breeding very
late, and I have found their nests with young birds half-fledged while
summer-pruning apple trees in August. They come into my garden close
to the windows in May, after the ripening seeds of the myosotis
(forget-me-not) in the spring-bedding. I never remember seeing a
goldfinch at Aldington, which should show that the thistles were well
under control, for the seed is a great attraction. One often hears the
practice of allowing thistles to run to seed condemned as criminal,
for everybody knows that each thistle-down, carried by the wind,
contains a seed, and that the attachment of a light structure of
plumes is one of Nature's methods of ensuring dissemination. But, in
Worcestershire, it is always asserted that thistle seed will not
germinate--I am referring to _Cnicus arvensis_--and it is said that a
prize of L50 offered for a seedling thistle remains unclaimed to this
day. I failed, myself, in trying to obtain young plants from seeds
sown in a flower-pot, and I have never seen a seedling in all the
thousands of miles I must have walked over young cornfields when my
men were hoeing.
I have heard an interesting story about rooks which were causing a
farmer much damage in a field newly sown with peas.
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