THE TWO-BANDED CROSSBILL. 283 



Esq., at Grenville, near Belfast, in May, 1802. Very few individuals 

 of this species have been obtained in England or Scotland. 



THE TWO-BANDED CROSSBILL. 

 European White-winged Crossbill. 



Loxia bifasciata, Nilsson. 



Has once been obtained. 



The first notice of the occurrence of this species in the British 

 islands, is that of Templeton, who communicated to the Linnean 

 Society of London a note of one having been " shot at Grenville, 

 near Belfast, January the 11th, 1802/' An extract at p. 276, in- 

 forms us, that the common crossbill was particularly numerous in 

 the southern half of Ireland that season. M. Le Baron De Selys 

 Longchamps, in his excellent " Eaune Beige," is of opinion, that 

 the bird called L. leucoptera, in works on British Ornithology, is 

 instead the L. bifasciata, which has been until lately confounded 

 with it: he describes the differences between them (p. 77), and 

 figures the heads and bills of the two species. The latter has 

 been obtained during whiter, in Sweden, Germany, and Belgium : 

 the former is a North- American species, which has been killed in 

 England within the last few years .* As Mr. Templeton made a 

 coloured drawing of the specimen, I was desirous that this should 

 be seen by M. De Selys, on his visit to Belfast in the autumn of 

 1844, but unfortunately it had been taken by Mr. Robert Temple- 

 ton, along with many other delineations and papers of his father's 

 to Ceylon. The drawing has, however, by the kind attention of my 

 friend just named, been since sent to me from that island, and 

 proves the Irish specimen to have been the L. bifasciata, as de- 

 scribed and figured by M. De Selys : it represents the bird of a 

 greenish-olive on the head and back, with dark-brownish mark- 

 ings ; rump yellow ; tail-feathers blackish, bordered with yellow ; 

 entire under plumage yellow, with dark streaks ; two conspicuous 



* Noticed by Yarrell in the Zoological Proceedings, since the 2nd edit, of his 

 Brit. Birds was published in 1845. 



