166 Notes on the Crossbill. 



vals.* I was naturally very curious to know whether they 

 would breed in this country, and requested several persons 

 near whose neighbourhood they were occasionally seen, to 

 keep a sharp look out for me; but, though they were here 

 somewhat more than twelve calendar months (from the latter 

 end of June, 1835, till the twelfth of June, 1836, when the 

 very dingy one I have mentioned was shot), I could never 

 learn they made any attempt to build. Some eight or ten 

 years ago, early in March, a pair made a nest at the Audley 

 End avTary, near this town, in which the female deposited five 

 eggs. The nest was of a loose texture, not unlike that of the 

 common greenfinch, though not near so well or so carefully 

 built; the eggs, also, were not unlike those of that bird, but 

 larger; they, however, deserted them without ever attempting 

 at incubation, although I believe they were perfectly undis- 

 turbed. About the same time, a pair also built their nest in 

 a garden in this town, on an apple tree, but were shot before 

 they had completed it.t A young male was slightly winged 

 by a shot, and taken early in August, 1835, and kept in a 

 cage, and fed with hempseed, which it preferred to every 

 other kind of food, and appeared to delight in cramming 

 itself with it to satiety. As soon as its first fright was over, in 

 an astonishingly short space of time, it familiarised itself to 

 whoever would feed it, suffering no symptoms of restraint 

 from the presence of a stranger ; always busy, always cheer- 

 ful, even from the first ; fluttering and jumping about its cage 

 in a lively and impudent manner, now hanging from its top, 

 and now upon the perch, but more frequently suspending 

 itself by its powerful claws from the sides of its prison, in 

 which seemingly uncomfortable position it always spent its 

 hours of sleep. As it fed voraciously, it soon became very 

 fat After about three months' confinement it began to grow 



* Several were procured up to January, 1836, of which I made no 

 notes ; two or three were taken in January, a few in February, several in 

 March, two on April 7., five on April 19., two on May 3., three on May 17., 

 and, finally, the dingy one above mentioned, on June 12. 1836; after which 

 they were once heard, but from this time I lost sight of them. 



\ These wanderers, feeling the genial influence of the season, set about 

 fulfilling the duties nature has imposed upon them ; but, alas ! they found, 

 when too late, that they had strayed out of their latitude, and had but 

 vainly attempted to fix their habitation in an uncongenial clime. I have 

 known, more than once, the robin allured by the too tempting prospects of 

 a few fine days, set about its nest, and deposit its eggs ; but stern winter, 

 again resuming his reign, has convinced the hapless dupe that it has been 

 much too early, and it has abandoned its nest, in one instance without 

 completing the number of its eggs. I have heard of a similar case with 

 sparrows also. I once knew a partridge deposit her eggs early in February j 

 but, winter visiting her too roughly, she forsook them. 



