More akin to the poor despised sparrow than the bird last mentioned, though infinitelv surpassing it in the gayness of their plumage, are the finches which regularly frequent our lanes in spring and summer. The goldfinch prefers the open field and barren wastes; but the chaffinch, greenfinch, yellowhammer, and to some extent the linnet, are lane birds. Of these the most decided in its love for the quiet stillness of our lanes is the yellowhammer. Where is the hedgerow unvisited by this pretty creature?—whose bright yellow plumage seems as necessary to the lane-sides as the June roses or the trailing woodbine. Pretty yellow thing, he fain would sing; but, like the greenfinch, his feeble though persistent efforts end only in a falling cadence of two notes prolonged into what sounds like a wail of distress, or rather of grief and mortification, at not being able to sing like the robin and the wren.
Much less monotonous than the yellowhammer's and greenfinch's plaintive lamentations, is the "pink, pink, pink," of the gay and merry chaffinch, whose cheery notes are so familiar in our green English lanes—in the earlier part of the summer, that is to say, for later in the season his bright plumage is more noticeable in the field than the lane. How conscious, by-the-way, our handsome chaffinch seems to be of that bright plumage of his, by perpetually preening his feathers: or is that constant trimming of his plumage simply his love of cleanliness?
Source: The Illustrated London News, July 8, 1882, p.47