238 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 



matters and may have the opportunity of searching our 

 fir-plantations, may do so at the season most likely to 

 afford a favourable result, and thus with care and 

 patience I have little doubt that, at least, the occasional 

 nesting of the crossbill in Norfolk, will become an 

 ascertained fact. Sir Thos. Browne^ from the following 

 note, evidently regarded this species, in his time, as 

 rather a summer than a winter visitant to Norfolk : — 

 " Loxias or curvirostra, a, bird a little bigger than a 

 thrush, of fine colours and pretty note, differently from 

 other birds, the upper and lower bill crossing each other ; 

 of a very tame nature, comes about the beginning of 

 summer. I have known them kept in cages ; but not to 

 outlive the winter." According to Messrs. Sheppard and 

 Whitear, nests have been found in Suffolk in two 

 authentic instances, in one case completed by the 26th of 

 March, and a notice of the appearance of the crossbill 

 in the same county during the winter of 1821-2, in 

 considerable numbers, was communicated by the late 

 Mr. J. D. Hoy, of Stoke Nayland, to " Loudon's 

 Magazine of Natural History" (January, 1834), and 

 will be found repeated also in Macgillivray's "British 

 Birds," vol. i., p. 426. Amongst other observations on 

 their singular habits, Mr. Hoy alludes particularly to 

 their tameness, both in a wild state and in confinement, 

 and speaks of catching numbers of them with a horse- 

 hair noose fixed to the end of a fishing rod, which he 

 slipped over their heads whilst busily feeding, and others 

 were secured with a limed twig. The cones of the larch 

 were cut off with the beak, and held firmly in both 

 claws, but to the Scotch fir and other larger cones they 

 would cling with their feet, whilst they extracted the 

 seeds with their bills in the most dexterous manner. 

 In 1853, when as before stated, crossbills were unusually 

 plentiful, as many as five pairs were shot at one time, 

 in a plantation at Bowthorpe, near Norwich, a very 



