THE CROSSBILL. 



279 



In most of the preceding instances, these birds were seen 

 feeding on the cones of the larch fir and common pine (Scotch fir), 

 more especially on the former, with the seeds of which I have 

 found their stomachs filled : — once only were there any fragments 

 of stone in them. They generally attracted attention, by the 

 noise produced in splitting open the cones, compared by some 

 persons to that made by the breaking of sticks. When at Tolly- 

 more Park in June, 1838, the game-keeper informed me, that in 

 the preceding winter, crossbills were abundant there, so 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 ; — he remarked that 

 they are generally very tame when feeding. He had seen them 

 picking at the cones of the various species of firs and pines in the 

 park, and particularized the spruce-fir, as one on which they were 

 so employed.* 



As the breeding of the crossbill is particularly noticed by Mr. 

 Robert Davis, junr., of Clonmel, his observations on the species 

 generally, are here brought together : — "About the 18th of Jan., 

 1838, a flock of these birds appeared at Ballibrado, near Cahir, 

 and five of them were killed : they were very tame, and were ob- 

 served to feed like parrots, holding the fir-cones in one claw. 

 On the 1 6th of August, the same year, four crossbills were thence 

 sent to me, where they still continued in considerable numbers. 

 I cannot hear of their occurrence anywhere else, except in the 

 neighbouring demesne of Kilcommon ; two more were sent to me 

 early in September, but like the others, were much damaged, as, 

 in consequence of their tameness, the person who shot them fired 



* My informant states, that about thirty years ago 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 pro- 

 bably 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 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 

 (Tyrus aucuparia). 



