EUROPEAN CROSSBILL. 707 



them. It occasionally eats the kernel of the cocoa-nut, and 

 the crust of loaf-bread. 



" For the period of ten years Crossbills had not made their 

 appearance in this part of the country. In the beginning of 

 September 1838, however, I observed a dozen of them feeding 

 upon the seed of the larch, in a plantation near to Polkemmet 

 House, the residence of Sir William Baillie, Bart., in the 

 parish of AVhitburn. To this place, for nearly six months 

 afterwards, during the morning and forenoon, they almost daily 

 resorted, and roosted every night in an old Scotch fir planta- 

 tion, about a mile and a half distant. One afternoon, while I 

 was watching them, they alighted upon the top of a tree, at a 

 short distance from me. In a moment they crept into the 

 thickest of the branches, and although a young man and I threw 

 stones at them until wc were tired, we only succeeded in ex- 

 pelling one of them from their roosting place. As it was nearly 

 two hours before their usual time of retirement, we were sur- 

 prised at the occurrence. In the course of the evening it blew 

 a severe hurricane, accompanied by a very heavy fall of rain, 

 which may account for their unwillingness to leave the place, 

 which was to shelter them from the storm, of the speedy ap- 

 proach of which they seemed to have an instinctive know- 

 ledge. 



" After feeding, they often fly round and round in the air for 

 a few minutes with great velocity, emitting a sharp note, and 

 then, alighting upon the to^? of a high tree, they remain there 

 for some time. Upon a fine sunny forenoon, about the end of 

 January, I have heard them warbling to each other, in low 

 pleasing strains, bearing some resemblance to the notes of the 

 Bullfinch. 



" That Crossbills occasionally breed in Scotland, I can now 

 assert from personal observation. About the end of March 

 1889, a pair began to build at the extremity of the upper branch 

 but one of a spruce-tree about forty feet high, growing in the 

 middle of a small clump of firs upon the banks of the river 

 Avon, in the parish of Torphichcn, and about sixty yards from 

 Crawhill House. The outside of the nest was formed of the 

 twigs of the Scotch fir and spruce, the bark of the larch drawn 



