43.2 LOXIA CURVIROSTRA. 



LOXIA CURVIROSTEA, Linnccus. 



§ 2320. Four — Balnagown, Ross-shire, April, 1857. From 

 Mr. John Hancock. 



One of several nests sent to Mr. Hancock hy a correspondent of 

 his. The note accompanying these specimens is as follows : — " Taken 

 early in April, 1857. The eggs were quite fresh." The nest, now 

 before me, is neat and compact, made externally of sticks of fir 

 and heather and a few splinters of decayed wood. There is a little 

 fine grass mixed and lined with white hair- lichen, and a little moss 

 and sheep's wool. With some of the nests the birds were sent to 

 Mr. Hancock, and they were all Common Crossbills. 



[Mr. Hancock, in the notes printed by Mr. Hewitson in tlie last edition of 

 his work (p. 213), states that, though he and Mr. Charles St. John found three 

 Crossbills' nests in one day in 1850, the young had flown from each of them. 

 This was in the Findhorn woods, and it was not until 1854 that he obtained, 

 through that gentleman, from Ross-shire a nest with eggs — a statement con- 

 firmed by Mr. St. John's posthumously-published volume (Natural History & 

 Sport in Moray, pp. 76, 76, and 124, note). For several years after, and, as 

 the succeeding entries shew, especially in 1858, Mr. Hancock continued to 

 receive eggs from the same quarter, taken, as he subsequently told me, by a 

 young man, Robert Macdonald, whom he had instructed, so that they could be 

 thoroughly trusted.] 



^ 2321. Four. — Benlochan, near Balnagown, 6 March, 1858. 

 From Mr. Hancock. 



The information accompanying this nest was to the eflfect that it 

 was found while being built on the 27th of February, and taken on 

 the 6th of March, there being then ten inches of snow on the ground. 

 It was on the bough of a fir about five-and-twenty feet higli. I had 

 particularly asked Mr. Hancock to obtain for me a nest taken as 

 early in the year as possible, that there might be no chance of it 

 being that of a Greenfinch or any such bird. The nest is made 

 chiefly of moss with a few sticks, and fine lichen with a bit or two 

 of wool in the lining. 



