IRREGULAR MIGRATION 93 



tioned, has chronicled the invasion of crossbills in 

 the year 1251, his attention being attracted to them 

 by their attacks on apples, a fruit which in the thir- 

 teenth century had attained a certain importance in 

 the western counties of England. " In the course of 

 this year," he writes, "about the fruit season, there 

 appeared, in the orchards chiefly, some remarkable 

 birds which had never before been seen in England, 

 somewhat larger than larks, which ate the kernel of 

 the fruit and nothing else, whereby the trees were 

 fruitless, to the loss of many. The beaks of these 

 birds were crossed." On a subsequent visitation in 

 1593 they are also reported to feed upon apple- 

 seeds, a habit so common in England that at one 

 time the crossbill was often called "shell-apple." In 

 the record of this occurrence, couched in the quaint 

 phrases of ancient English, it is said that "it seemed 

 they came out of some country not inhabited; for 

 that they at the first would abide shooting at them 

 either with pellet, bowe or other engine, and not 

 remove until they were stricken down. . . . They 

 were very good meate." Crossbill years have been 

 recorded regularly in modern times in the United 

 States, and have frequently carried the birds well 

 south into the Carolinian life-zone. In the Middle 

 West, in Kansas, where the birds are rarer than in 

 the east, flights have included the subspecies known 

 as Bendire's crossbill, which breeds in the Rocky 



