Editor’s Letter

letter, left): the mourning sierra finch, as it is now known, is a widespread species of South America, from the high Andes of Peru to the shores of Patagonia. Everywhere, it favours hedgerows, farmland and shrubby country, usually dry and often barren. breeding account refers to 1914, when a Dr M. Amsler procured a pair from Cross’s Menagerie in Liverpool. He lost the cock bird, but managed to replace it with another, and in 1915 the pair fledged two young (“from a cup-shaped nest in a privet bush”), for which achievement Dr Amsler received a medal from the Foreign Bird Club.