16 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS. 



food supply prevail. It is said to be increasing in 

 numbers, but were such not the case there would 

 be no fear of the extinction of the species so 

 long as we continue to grow plantations of cone- 

 bearing trees, since some members of the great con- 

 tinental incursions, which take place from time to 

 time, would be sure to stay and nest with us. 



Although sometimes feeding upon insects and 

 the pips of apples, the Cross-bill is essentially a 

 coniferous-tree-loving bird, and when a small flock 

 is at breakfast in the branch of a fir-tree, its 

 members keep on fluttering in and out, and send- 

 ing down such a shower of fragments of the cones 

 from which they are busy extracting the seeds, 

 that the ground beneath quickly becomes thickly 

 strewn with them. 



A small colony lived all last winter and spring 

 in and around the town of Torquay, where there 

 is every reason to believe young ones were reared. 



The nest is built in a fork or on the branch 

 of a larch or Scotch fir-tree, at a height of from 

 five or six to forty or even fifty feet. It is 

 composed of slender twigs, coarse dry grass and 

 rootlets, with an inner lining of fine grass, hairs 

 and feathers. 



Our illustration was secured near to Cappagh, 

 in Ireland, where our friend Mr. R. J. Ussher 

 had- four pairs breeding within a very limited 

 area, when the photograph was taken in 1896. 

 Although notorious for their erratic patronisation 

 of even a favourite breeding-haunt, they have 

 nested there regularly every year since, and had 

 young ones as early as March this year. 



The eggs, numbering four or five, are white in 

 ground colour, faintly tinged with blue, and very 

 sparingly speckled with reddish and pale brown 



