Separate Flocks.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20424, 1 October 1934, Page 6

Separate Flocks.

Nature Notes.

By

James Drummond,

F.L.S.. F.Z.S.

JJOBODY IN NEW ZEALAND seems to x have noted a peculiarity associated with chaffinches’ movements in flocks, which often is commented on in England. In England and in Europe, observers have noted in autumn and winter large flocks composed of members of one sex only. Linnaeus reported that all females left Sweden in the winter, and that all males stayed behind. This induced him to name the species Fringila ca?lebs, the bachelor finch. Ilis observation was not completely confirmed, but the name rcThe sexes do not separate in this way in the south and in the west of England. Males were seen in small parties of three or four or a dozen at one place in Scotland. The females had disappeared. The same thing occurred in the north of England. Charming Gilbert White, vicar of Selborne, 165 years ago knew that the sexes separated in the winter and were seen in separate flocks. He could not understand why flecks of females were commoner than flocks of males, and he asked his correspondents in the north of England to tell him of which sex the flocks were mostly composed. Mr Hudson presumed that the habit is confined to autumn arrivals in England from Europe, and that the migratory instinct is felt earlier and more powerfully by females than by males. Males may be distinguished by a black forehead, a chestnut back, a pink breast, fading into white lower down, each wing barred obliquely with white. The white bars arc less conspicuous on the female, whose lower parts are grevish-white.