240 BIRDS OP NORFOLK. 



Huckett : — ^^ Seven specimens of the Parrot Cross- 

 bill, five of them males and two females, were received 

 bj Mr. J. A. Clarke for preservation, having been killed 

 near Brandon, in Suffolk, on the 24th of October, 1863." 

 On communicating with Mr. Clarke, a bird preserver, 

 at Homerton, near London, he most obligingly fur- 

 nished me with the following particulars : — " They 

 were killed (he writes) on the Norfolk side of Brandon, 

 on some trees near the railway station, but are not in 

 very good plumage, as they were shot when moulting. 

 My friend has three in a case, two males and one 

 female ; the other four he gave to me, and I preserved 

 two of them, the other two were so battered about that 

 I did not stTiff them, but being rare birds I skinned 

 them, as I wanted some feathers from them to mend 

 one of the others." I am indebted to Mr. Clarke for 

 the two latter now before me ; but from the size and 

 form of their beaks, as compared with Mr. Newton's 

 (Saxham) bird, and a foreign specimen in the Norwich 

 museum (No. 126), there is no doubt that these are 

 merely fine examples of the common crossbill, wanting 

 the abrupt curvature and depth of the upper mandible, 

 peculiar to the larger species, also particularly wide 

 across the back of the head, indicative of increased 

 power in its stoutly built and compressed form of beak. 

 If, therefore, these two skins are identical, as they most 

 probably are, with the stuffed specimens, Mr. Huckett 

 has somewhat too hastily announced the appearance of 

 parrot-crossbills so plentifully in Norfolk. On the 2nd 

 of March, 1864, two more crossbills, both red males, 

 were also shot near Brandon, which, from their size, 

 were at first supposed to belong to the larger species, 

 and as such they are described by Mr. Gould, in his 

 " Birds of Great Britain ;" but it is only right to add, 

 that he had not himself seen the specimens, but relied 

 upon the information sent him. One of these is now in 



