104 THE CROSSBILL 
alder and other trees are also sometimes visited, and they have ~ 
been noticed to resort to thistles and pick the seeds from them. 
‘In the autumn of 1821’, says Macgillivray, ‘when walking from 
Aberdeen to Elgin, by the way of Glenlivat, and along the Spey, 
I had the pleasure of observing, near the influx of a tributary of 
that river, a flock of several hundreds of Crossbills, busily engaged 
in shelling the seeds of the berries which hung in clusters on a 
clump of rowan (mountain ash) trees. So intent were they on 
satisfying their hunger that they seemed not to take the least heed 
of me; and as I had not a gun, I was content with gazing on them 
without offering them any molestation. They clung to the twigs 
in all sorts of positions, and went through the operation of feeding 
in a quiet and business-like manner, each attending to his own 
affairs without interfering with his neighbours. It was, indeed, a 
pleasant sight to see how the little creatures fluttered among the 
twigs, all in continued action, like so many bees on a cluster of 
flowers in sunshine after rain.’ A writer in the Zoologist thus 
describes the manceuvres of a flock which he observed in 1849, in the 
county of Durham: ‘On the fifteenth of July when taking a drive 
in the western part of the county, where there are many thousand 
acres of fir-plantations, I had the good fortune to see a flock of 
birds cross my path, which appeared to be Crossbills ; so, leaving 
the gig, I followed some distance into a fir-plantation, where, 
to my great gratification, I found perhaps thirty or more feeding 
on some Scotch firs. The day being fine, and as they were the 
first I had seen in a state of wild nature, I watched them for about 
twenty minutes. Their actions are very graceful while feeding, 
hanging in every imaginable attitude, peering into the cones, 
which, if they contain seeds, are instantly severed from the branch ; 
clutched with one foot, they are instantly emptied of their contents, 
when down they come. So rapidly did they fall, that I could 
compare it to nothing better than being beneath an oak-tree in 
autumn, when the acorns are falling in showers about one’s head, 
but that the cones were rather heavier. No sooner are they on 
the wing than they, one and all, commence a fretful, unhappy, 
chirl, not unlike the Redpoll’s, but louder.’ Another writer, in 
the Magazine of Natural History, thus records his experience: 
‘From October, 1821, to the middle of May, 1822, Crossbills were 
very numerous in this county (Suffolk), and, I believe, extended 
their flight into many parts of England. Large flocks frequented 
some fir-plantations in this vicinity, from the beginning of November 
to the following April. I had almost daily opportunities of watching 
their movements ; and so remarkably tame were they, that, when 
feeding on fir-trees not more than fifteen or twenty feet high, I 
have often stood in the midst of the flock, unnoticed and unsus- 
pected. I have seen them hundreds of times, when on the larch, 
cut the cone from the branch with their beak, and, holding it 
