GEOSSBEAKS. 41 



ground, which joins to my garden, for some weeks. They 

 used to march about in a stately manner, feeding in the 

 walks, many times in the day ; and seemed disposed to breed 

 in my outlet ; but were frightened and persecuted by idle 

 boys, who would never let them be at rest.* 



Three grossbeaks (loxia coccotJiraustes} appeared some 

 years ago in my fields, in the winter ; one of which I shot. 

 Since that, now and then, one is occasionally seen in the 

 same dead season. f 



A crossbill (looda curvirostra) was killed last year in this 

 neighbourhood. 



Our streams, which are small, and rise only at the end of 



* Specimens have been killed at different times in this country, and 

 instances are even recorded of their having even bred ; the species, however, 

 can only be placed among our occasional visitants. The specimen from which 

 the figure in Mr. Selby's elegant Illustrations of British Ornithology was 

 drawn, was taken on the coast, near Bamborough Castle, Northumberland. 

 Colonel Montague mentions a pair that began a nest in Hampshire, and Dr. 

 Latham records a young hoopoe shot in the month of June. The species is 

 abundantly met with in the south of Europe ; it also occurs in Holland, 

 Germany, Denmark and Sweden. In the winter it retires to Asia or Africa, 

 where it is also a permanent resident. W. J. 



One specimen was shot in the county of Dublin, and another in the 

 county of Tipperary, in 1828. Loudon's Magazine. W. J. 



}* This also can only be placed as an occasional visitant, appearing most 

 frequently in the southern counties of England, during hard and stormy 

 winters. Mr. White (as we learn from the Naturalist's Calendar and 

 Miscellaneous Observations, published in a separate volume, since the 

 author's decease, by Dr. Aikin, and to which we shall occasionally refer) 

 met with this species at different times, and found it feeding on the stones 

 of damson plums, that still remained on and about the trees in his garden. 

 This species forms the type of the genus coccothraustes. " On the 14th 

 May, 18*28, the nest of a hawfinch was taken in an orchard belonging to Mr. 

 Waring, at Chelsfield, Kent. The old female was shot on the nest, which 

 was of a slovenly loose form, and shallow, not being so deep as those of the 

 greenfinch or linnet, and was placed against the large bough of an apple- 

 tree, about ten feet from the ground. It was composed externally of dead 

 twigs and a few roots, mixed with coarse white moss, or lichen, and lined 

 with horse-hair and a little fine dried grass. The eggs were five in number, 

 about the size of a skylark's, but shorter and rounder, and spotted with bluish 

 ash and olive brown, some of the spots inclining to dusky or brackish 

 brown. The markings were variously distributed on the different eggs." 

 J. C. Loudon, Jour, of Nat. Hist. W. J. 



They are by no means uncommon birds in this country. Many 

 of them breed among the Horn-beam pollards in Epping and Waltham 

 Forests. ED. 



