152 BIRDS OF THE WEST OF SCOTLAND. 



rose. The bird had been obtained in the neighbourhood, and is 

 now preserved in the local museum. 



THE PINE GROSBEAK. 



PYRRHULA ENUCLEATOR. 



IN 1769 Pennant observed this species in Aberdeenshire, and refers 

 to the circumstance in the following short notice taken from his 

 "Tour in Scotland," published in 1772, 2d ed., 8vo: "I saw 

 flying in the forests the greater bullfinch of Mr Edwards: tab. 123, 

 124 the Loxia enudealor of Linnaeus, whose food is the seed of 

 pine cones a bird common to the north of Europe and America." 

 About twenty years afterwards, Dr Burgess included the Pine 

 Bullfinch in his list of the birds of the parish of Kirkmichael in 

 Dumfriesshire, and it is likewise mentioned in the statistical 

 account of the parish of Eccles in Berwickshire as a rare visitor 

 about thirty-five years ago. In a carefully prepared catalogue of the 

 animals and plants of the Esk Valley in Midlothian, published in 

 1808, and which bears evidence of having been the work of the 

 late Patrick Neill, Secretary to the Natural History Society of 

 Edinburgh, this species is included, doubtless on good authority. 



Don includes this bird in his Fauna of Forfarshire, which was 

 published by the Rev. James Headrick, minister of Dunnichen, in 

 1813, and states that it had come in great numbers to the woods 

 of Glamis and Lindertis in company with flocks of the common 

 crossbill, " and totally destroyed the whole larch and fir cones for 

 these two years past." 



I can find no reliable record of the Pine Grosbeak having ap- 

 peared in any part of Scotland since 1833, and it is now extremely 

 doubtful if it ever occurs. There is, indeed, a possibility of the 

 bright coloured males of the common crossbill having been mistaken 

 for this species, especially when males and females are seen on wing 

 together. It is, at all events, a singular circumstance that no recent 

 observer has met with it. Ornithologists would do well to examine 

 carefully any Scottish specimens that may yet come in their way in 

 case the birds should turn out to belong to the American variety, 

 which since Audubon's time has been ranked as a new species. 

 It is catalogued in Professor Baird's work as the Pinicola 

 Canadensis (Cabanis), and its habitat given as " Arctic America. 



