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



abode at a place just so long as it suits them, without con- 

 templating a return to any particular region. 



Bewick and Yarrell, in their respective histories of British 

 birds, treat us with delightful and copious accounts of the ap- 

 pearance of crossbills in England in the olden time, when, like 

 a more potent enemy — " they were attacked with slings and 

 crossbows/^ valiantly " never thinking of flying otF till some 

 of them, stricken by stones or apples, or leaden bullets, fell 

 dead from the trees." The grand point of view in which birds 

 were considered at that period (1593) is not omitted to be 

 mentioned, as in one account it is stated that " their flesh was 

 sufficiently savoury and delicate," and in the other, that " they 

 were very good meate*." 



White-winged Crossbill, Loxia leucoptera, Gmel. — 

 The only record of the occurrence of this bird in Ireland is 

 the following, communicated by Mr. Templeton to his friend 

 Mr. Dawson Turner, and published in the ' Linnaean Trans- 

 actions ' — "Shot at Greenville, near Belfast, January 11, 

 1802." This is the first notice of the species as a visitant to 

 the British Islands. Mr. Templeton's drawing represents the 

 female bird as described by C. L. Bonaparte.f 



* Loxia pi/tlojjsittacus is included in Templeton's ' Catalogue of Irish 

 Bii-ds,' from the supposed occurrence of the species in one instance. A co- 

 loured drawing of the specimen, of natural size, was fortunately made by 

 that accomplished naturalist. It represents theZ. curvirostra with the point 

 of the lower mandible not reaching beyond the profile of the upper. At the 

 foot of the drawing, L. pyfiojjsittacus is followed by a note of doubt, which 

 does not appear in the printed catalogue. 



f It is remarked bv Ronnie of some species of our small birds, that its 

 nests about a cotton mill in Ayrshire were found to be lined with cotton. 

 At Whitchouse, near Belfast, (as I have been informed by James Grimshaw, 

 jun., Esq.,) the chaffinches and common sparrows which built around two 

 cotton-mills always made use of cotton in the construction of their nests. 

 The mills were a quarter of a mile distant from each other, and all the nests 

 of these birds erected in the intervening plantations, as well as in the vici- 

 nity of the mills, exhibited the foreign product, not only as lining, but more 

 or less of it on the outside. On remarking to my informant that its con- 

 spicuous colour would betray the presence of the nest, and not accord with 

 the theory that birds assimilate the outward appearance to siu'rounding ob- 

 jects, he stated, that on the contrary, the use of the cotton in that locality 

 might rather be considered as rendering the nest more difficult of detection, 

 the road-side hedges and neighbouring trees being always dotted with tJifts 

 of it, owing to the constant passing of the workers from the one mill to the 

 other. 



The same gentleman mentions, that when lately (Nov. 1841) in Man- 

 chester, a lady of his acquaintance there told him of her having last summer 

 lost a piece of very valuable old lace which was left out to dry, and that on 

 the spouts being cleared of sparrows' nests, the lace was discovered uninjured 

 as partly lining one of them. 



A note upon a canary-finch may here be given. — Sept. 9, 1S33. A bird 



