By the Rev. A. C. Smith. 



91 



fruit. It is on this account most hateful to gardeners in early- 

 spring, at which season alone it has the courage to come so near 

 human habitations, for it is essentially a shy timid retiring bird, 

 and loves the depths of dark woods, and the thickest of hedges for 

 its retreat. It is sparingly distributed throughout the County, and 

 its plumage is too well known to require comment. 



"Common Crossbill" {Loxia curvirostra) . Yery eccentric in 

 the periods of its visits here, no less than in the formation of its 

 beak, is this truly singular bird. • It is a denizen of northern 

 latitudes, and though an interval of many years frequently elapses 

 between its visits, it will occasionally arrive here in considerable 

 numbers, when it frequents larch and fir plantations : and it is in 

 extracting the seeds from the fir cones that its remarkable beak, 

 (which at first sight appears a deformity) is so useful ; this is of 

 great strength, as are also the muscles of the head and neck, 

 enabling it to work the mandibles laterally with extraordinary 

 power, (this being the only British bird which exhibits any lateral 

 motion of the mandibles :) these are both curved, and at the points 

 overlap one another considerably : and when the bird holds a fir 

 cone in its foot, after the manner of the parrots, and " opening its 1 

 bill so far as to bring the points together, slips it in this position 

 under the hard scales of the cone, the crossing points force out the 

 scale, and the seed which lies below it is easily secured. " An old 

 writer of Queen Elizabeth's time quoted by Yarrell says of it, 

 " it came about harvest, a little bigger than a sparrow, which had 

 bils thwarted crosswise at the end, and with these it would cut an 

 apple in two at one snap, eating onely the kernel ; and they made 

 a great spoil among the apples." I have many notices of its 

 occurrence in almost all parts of the County ; suffice it to say that 

 some years since they frequented the larch plantations at Old Park 

 in considerable numbers : Mr. Marsh saw some trees in his garden 

 at Sutton Benger covered with them in 1838, and relates that the 

 keeper at Brinkworth killed fifteen at a shot. In plumage scarcely 

 two specimens in a large flock are alike, so variously are its colours 

 distributed, for while some old males are nearly crimson all over, others 

 1 Monthly Paoket, "Our feathered neighbours," Yol. xi. page 274. 



