MR. J. H. GURNEY ON MIGRATION OF CROSSBILLS. 71 
VIII. 
GREAT MIGRATION OF CROSSBILLS 
(LOXIA CURVIROSTRA, L.). 
By J. H. Gurney, F.L.S., F.Z.S. 
Read 22nd February, 1910. 
The Crossbill has been known to be a Norfolk bird since the 
middle of the seventeenth century, but it has never been 
a common one, and on looking through past records I can 
find none, so far as Norfolk and Suffolk are concerned, which 
detail any migration of Crossbills like the present one. 
The south-eastern counties, and Kent especially, have come 
in for the fullest share of the Crossbills’ visit, but other parts 
of England have not been without them, and it may be seen 
bv consulting Mr. I. S. Whitaker’s article in ‘ The Ibis ’ 
(1910, p. 331), how generally diffused they have been on the 
continent, reaching as far as Malta, but not to North Africa. 
The first intimation of their having reached Norfolk came 
from Mr. E. C. Saunders of Yarmouth, who had one which 
struck the telegraph wires near that place on June the 21st, 
1909. On July the 8th the gardener at Northrepps counted 
twelve on a spruce fir-tree, and on the 10th the little band had 
increased to sixteen, and from that time they went on spreading 
over the county, being heard of in various places. 
The Crossbill is an early nester, and as was to be expected, 
they began to breed in several counties in March. In the 
neighbourhood of Brandon Mr. Evans tells me he saw twenty- 
five nests within a square mile during April, and some nested 
on the Norfolk side of the border in that vicinity, but none 
that I know of on the eastern side of the county. 
At Castle Rising, Mr. N. Tracey inspected a nest with four 
fresh eggs on March 28th, built about two feet from the top 
