Mr. W. Thompson on the Birds of Ireland. 409 



county Dublin. — Feb. 3, 1838. 7'hree shot in the county of Carlow. 

 — Feb. 5. Seven from county of Kildare, and 26th of same month a 

 similar number were sent from the county of Carlow to Dublin ; — 

 about the metropolis itself, specimens were occasionally shot from 

 October to March." At the end of December 1837, I received from 

 Portglenone, county of Antrim, two specimens, which with a couple 

 more were shot out of a flock of about twelve that made known 

 their presence by the noise produced in opening the cones of the 

 " Scotch-fir" (Pi/ms sylvestris) , in a grove of which trees they were 

 feeding. On the 9th of January, and again on the 20th of February, 

 two of these birds were killed in a fir-grove near Hillsborough Park, 

 county of Down ; on the former occasion four were seen, on the 

 latter, the two only. — At Finnebrogue, near Downpatrick, one was 

 obtained last winter ; and the Rev. T. Knox, writing from Tooma- 

 vara, in the county of Tipperar}^ remarked, that he had heard of 

 flocks being seen in the west of Ireland at the same period. When 

 at ToUymore Park in, June 1838, the gamekeeper before alluded to 

 informed me that in the preceding winter crossbills were abundant 

 there, as many as fifty being sometimes seen in a flock. He pointed 

 out a larch-fir upon which he and a gentleman visiting the park saw 

 fourteen or fifteen engaged in extracting the seed, some of the birds 

 being at the time but a few yards above the spectators' heads, and 

 sending the cones to the ground in numbers ; — like others who have 

 witnessed it, he remarks that they are generally very tame when 

 feeding. He has seen them picking at the cones of the various spe- 

 cies of firs and pines in the park, and particularizes the spruce-fir as 

 one on which they were so employed : — since 1836 the crossbill has 

 not been known to breed there*. 



In the spring of 1838, as communicated to me by the Rev. B. J. 

 Clarke, seven of these birds were shot on the Spire Hill, near Port- 

 arlington, Queen's-county ; — about Mountmellick, in that county, 

 they were abundant soine years ago, and proved very destructive to 

 the apples. Dr. Farran, of Feltrim, near Dublin, has assured me 

 that crossbills bred at Delgany and the Vale of Ovoca, in the county 

 of Wicklow, in 1838 ; and in the same year they are said to have 

 bred in the county of Meath, but unfortunately no particulars are 

 available. A crossbill shot near the town of Antrim on the 20th of 

 January 1839 came under my observation. In one instance only have 

 any fragments of stone occurred to me in the stomach of this spe- 

 cies. A bird-preserver in Wexford, in a letter dated November 1841, 



* My informant states, that about twenty years ago (now 1838) crossbills 

 came " in thousands" to the plantations at Dumfries House, in Ayrshire, 

 the seat of the Marquis of Bute, " and did not leave a cone upon the firs." 

 The year 1821 is probably alluded to, as these birds are reported to have 

 been then particularly numerous in other parts of Scotland and some parts 

 of England. Mr. Macgillivray (' British Birds,' vol. i. p. 425) gives a most 

 lively and graphic account of a flock of some hundreds he met with in the 

 east of Scotland feeding upon the fruit or seed of the mountain-ash {Pyrns 

 aucupariu). 



