42 FIELD-STUDIES OF RARER BIRDS 



instance, when on the 14th of the month under 

 notice I spent some time watching these nestlings 

 being fed, I was struck by the cunning, stealthy 

 way in which their parents came and went after 

 administering to their wants ; not a note was 

 heard, hardly a flutter of wings, as the pair 

 generally one at a time slipped through the fir 

 branchlets to the nest and out again. In the sense 

 that they have no objection whatsoever to the very 

 near presence of human beings, then Crossbills are 

 extraordinarily confiding and bold. 



On the 15th, working another area of the 

 forest, I found other three nests, two of which 

 contained four young apiece, both broods being 

 under a week old, the third holding five eggs (an 

 unusual clutch with the Crossbill, which usually 

 produces three or four only) on the point of 

 hatching. Here I stroked the sitting hen, more- 

 over and stranger still after she had been 

 induced to leave her charge, which she did with 

 the utmost reluctance, she actually ventured to 

 perch on my fingers as I examined her treasures. 

 Her husband, too, came very close, and both fairly 

 swore at me. 



All three nests were in Scots firs, out on a 

 projecting branch near the summit of the tree, and 

 between twenty-five and thirty-five feet from the 

 ground ; and all were in trees adorning a road- 

 side, and (as were the nests of the 9th) close to a 

 farm or cottage. One of these nests was, externally, 



