OBSERVED IN HERTS IN^ 1894. 149 



"Woods between St. jMichaels and the London and IS^orth Western 

 station. Probably this was the same year that I received specimens 

 of these birds from the boys of the town, who had procured them 

 in Yeruhim Woods. .Mr. Crossman writes : "On January the 

 27th (1895), I saw a flock of about fifty common crossbills in a 

 wood about three-quarters of a mile from Berkhamsted, just on the 

 borders of the county. I was first attracted by the note ' gip, gip,' 

 which I am well acquainted with, and just as I perceived them 

 they flew over my head and circled round and settled. I got 

 nearly underneath a larch tree on which a small party of them 

 settled, and I had a very good view of them through my field - 

 glasses. In this small party there was one orange-tinted bird, and 

 the rest were either crimson or green, one of the latter being very 

 dull-coloured. They were feeding on the cones of the larch, and 

 their mode of procedure was to break off a cone and carry it to a 

 stronger branch and there peck it over and then drop it. I picked 

 up several of these cones that had been dropped, and examined 

 them, and found that they were very slightly pulled about, some 

 of their leaves being split up. I heai'd one of the biixls singing : 

 the song is sweet, but not loud, some parts of it being like the song 

 of a robin, sweeter, though not so loud. The attitude of these 

 bii'ds when feeding (sometimes hanging with the head downwards-) 

 is very like that of a parrot or a titmouse." 



CiRL BuxTiNG {Ember iza cirliis). — During the year 1894 several 

 pairs of these birds were observed in spring and summer near 

 Tring. Dresser (iv, 179-182) says that this bunting "is pai-- 

 ticularly abundant in the Isle of Wight"; and also that Naumann 

 states that " It frequents the same kind of places as the yellow 

 bunting, such as the bushy banks of stre.ims, meadows, and hedges, 

 small groves in mountainous districts, in the neighbourhood of fields 

 and gardens." " In England," Dresser also says, "it is gregarious 

 in winter, and may be observed in flocks on the southern coast." 



The R.iVEif {Corvus cor ax). — ]\Ir. Hartert writes: "A raven 

 was caught in the woods above Tring by a village boy, in the 

 middle of October. He saw the bird on a branch and crept close 

 enough to hit it on the head with a stone, which only bedazzled 

 it, but did not kill it. When we got it first it was rather quiet, 

 but became wilder afterwards. The bird did not show signs of 

 having been in captivity, and it seems inexplicable what made 

 such a wary bird so foolish tliat it could be thrown over with a 

 stone. A dead raven was found by Mr. Miuall, the museum's 

 taxidermist, in the same woods on the 26th of December. It was 

 half rotten and only fit for a skeleton." Some of us may remember 

 the interesting account Mr. Hooper gave us of the raven in his 

 report for the year 1889. From this bird's wide distribution we 

 may hope that it would escape the fate, which in these days befalls 

 so many species of birds, of becoming extinct, or nearly so, through 

 the agency of man, possessing as it does a very ancient if not 

 honourable history, and associated as it is with the cherished beliefs 

 of many nations. 



