CORVID.«. 



233 



THE NUTCRACKER. 



NUCIFRAGA CARYOCATACTES (LilinEeUs). 



The Nutcracker is an irregular visitor to England and Wales, but 

 about thirty fairly authenticated occurrences are on record, princi- 

 pally in the southern half of our island, and all of them, so far as is 

 known, in autumn. In Scotland one was shot at Invergarry and 

 one in Orkney, both in October 1868; while Sir Herbert E. Max- 

 well has recorded an occurrence in Wigtownshire in 1891. As yet 

 there is no evidence that the bird has visited Ireland. 



C. L. Brehm and others have recognised several subspecies of 

 Nutcracker. A form with a stout bill (as in the engraving) breeds 

 in the coniferous forests south of lat. 67° in Scandinavia, some of 

 the islands of the Baltic, West Russia, East Prussia, the Hartz 

 Mountains, the Jura, the Black Forest, the French, Swiss and 

 Italian Alps, and eastward, by the Carpathians, to Transylvania. 

 This form is said to be resident. In Siberia, from the Ob and the 

 Yenesei eastward — -perhaps to portions of China — occurs a form 

 with a slender bill and with a greater developement of white spots ; 



