BIRDS OF GUERNSEY. 81 



the people were destroying them on account of the 

 damage they did. In a day or two he brought me 

 one hve and two dead Crossbills, and told me that 

 as many as forty had been shot in one person's 

 garden. The two dead ones he brought me were 

 one in red and the other in green plumage, and the 

 live one was in green plumage. This one I brought 

 home and kept in my aviary till March, 1868, 

 when it was killed by a Hawk striking it through 

 the w^ires. It was, however, still in the same green 

 plumage when it was killed as it was when I 

 brought it home, though it had moulted twice. 



The Crossbill did not appear at that time to be 

 very well known in Guernsey, as neither the bh'd- 

 catcher nor the people in whose gardens the bu'ds 

 were had ever seen them before or knew what they 

 were. This year (1866), however, appears to have 

 been rather an exceptional year with regard to 

 Crossbills, as I find some recorded in the ' Zoologist ' 

 from Norfolk, the Isle of Wight, Sussex, and 

 Henley-on-Thames, about the same time ; therefore 

 there must have been a rather widely-spread flight. 

 From that time I did not hear any more of Cross- 

 bills in the Islands till December, 1876, when Mr. 

 Couch sent me a skin of one in reddish plumage, 

 writing at the same time to say — " The Crossbill I 

 sent from its being so late in the season when it 

 was shot — the 11th of December ; there were four 

 of them in a tree by Haviland Hall. I happened 



