- chaffinch Fringilla caelebs. In order to observe this ubiquitous and attractive little bird, all you have to do is open your picnic basket. Ornithologists will tell you it feeds on seeds and beech mast, but it does not avert its beak from sandwiches and cake.
It is also known as the spink and in this form it appears as a term of abuse in the vituperative Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedy (1508) when Kennedy addresses his antagonist:
Tale tellare, rebellare, induellar wyth the devillis, <
Spynk, sink wyth stynk ad Tertara termagorum.