372 BRITISH BIRDS. 



nests were placed. One of the cock birds was a yellow- 

 one. The trees were low, and the nests were well out on the 

 horizontal boughs and difficult to see. 



Norman Gilroy. 



In Norfolk. 



On February 26th, I observed a Crossbill carrying building 

 material near Thetford, Norfolk, and I saw her return three 

 times to the same branch of a Scotch fir growing by the 

 roadside. There was nothing whatever to see of the nest, 

 nor was there on the following day, so she was evidently only 

 just commencing to build. I visited the site again on March 

 12th, when the nest was plainly visible from the ground. It 

 was placed close to the extreme end of a horizontal branch 

 some eighteen or twenty feet high. On my climbing the tree the 

 bird left the nest while I was still some feet from it. She was of 

 a dirty brown-green colour, not nearly so bright as many that I 

 have noticed. She kept twittering in the branches around 

 me for some time while I examined the nest, which contained 

 three eggs already considerably incubated. I saw nothing of 

 the cock bird. 



On March 20th I found another nest about 1| miles away 

 from the first one. It also was at the end of a horizontal branch 

 of a Scotch fir, and about twelve feet high. As soon as I 

 tapped a lower branch of the tree, the bird left the nest and 

 made loud cries, which immediately brought what I took to be 

 the cock bird. The pair of them flew round about me the whole 

 time that I was in the neighbourhood, making the same loud 

 incessant crying. Both these birds were green, but I saw a 

 red cock within twenty yards of this same nest. Is it possible 

 there were two hens ? The nest contained young, apparently 

 four or five days old. The position of the nest prevented me 

 from counting them, but I was able to watch them from six feet 

 distance. I doubt if they were more than three in number. 



The dead wood used by these birds in the construction of 

 their nests gives them the appearance of being old nests, and 

 nobody unaware of this peculiarity would imagine that they 

 were new ones containing eggs or young. 



My experience is exactly contrary to that of some ornith- 

 ologists that I know of, who assert that the cock bird readily 

 betrays the presence of the nest by singing in its immediate 

 locality. 1 obtained no assistance whatever from the cock 

 bird, in either case, and in fact, as stated above, never saw it 

 at all in the first instance. 



J. Cunningham Ford. 



