COMMON CROSSBILL. 97 



THE COMMON" CROSSBIIiL. '■ 



Loxia cnrvirostra. 

 The Common Crossbill is an occasional visitor o£ extremely 

 irregular appearance, both in the season at which it visits 

 us, and in the numbers which arrive. The Messrs. Matthews 

 record that 'on the 19th July, 1838, a small flock of Cross- 

 bills came to this village [Weston-on-the-Green], and re- 

 mained here until the middle of the following December .... 

 The plumage of the young bu'ds, when they first appeared, 

 was of a dingy green colour, speckled throughout, much like 

 the common Woodpecker of the same age; the old males 

 at that time exhibited their gayest tints of red and yellow.^ 

 [Zoologist, pp. 2597-8.) The appearance of the young birds in 

 July must not be understood as affording any proof that they 

 had been bred in the county, or even anywhere near, for 

 the Crossbill goes to nest very early in the spring — almost in 

 winter — and commences its wanderings over the country quite 

 early in summer. From the evidence contained in a letter 

 from the late Mr. W. Proctor, of Durham, to the late 

 Mr. T. C. Heysham, of Carlisle, dated 13th December, 1839 

 (an extract from which has been kindly furnished by the E-ev. 

 H. A. Macpherson), there is some reason to believe, however, 

 that Crossbills may have nested in Oxfordshire in 1839. Mr. 

 Proctor writes, ' I have just had a box from a correspondent 

 fi-om Oxfordshire, who obtained the eggs of the Crossbill this 

 last summer. I have got three, but they are not blown, they 

 resemble those of the green Linnet.'' This evidence, it must be 

 confessed, is merely presumptive. A flock of five Crossbills 

 appeared in a larch sj)inney by the side of the canal, a short 

 distance below Banbmy, in December, 1873, and were all shot; 

 and a male and female were killed near Broughton in the 

 winter of 1878 or 1879. In 1866 a large flock of forty or 

 fifty were observed on the 12th August, at Park Place, 

 Henley-on-Thames, on the Berkshire side of the river, where 

 they remained two or three days [Zoologist, ss. p. 523). . 



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