86 
BIRDS OF LEICESTERSHIRE AND RUTLAND. 
and Gold-Finch. We think it does not nestle with us, but merely performs 
an annual, irregular, inland migration.” I have no other note of this bird, 
save that the stuffers, Elkington and Turner, say they have received a few 
specimens from the vicinity of Leicester. As I have not myself examined any 
specimens, however, I cannot vouch for their accuracy, and should consider 
it a rare bird, nor have I any report of its breeding. 
Sub-family LOXIIN^. 
BULLFINCH. Pyrrhida europcm (Vieillot). 
Kesident, but unevenly distributed. 
Harley remarked that, although the nest of the Bullfinch is said by many 
writers to be built generall}' in hawthorn-hedgerows, thick bushes, and similar 
places, he had met with it within some of our coniferous shrubs. He also found 
a nest placed upon a lateral branch of a silver spruce fir in one of the groups 
of plantations of Charnwood Forest, and several times since the year 1825 he 
had met with it in like situations. In this he is quite correct, for at Belvoir 
I have seen its nest in such places, and the Museum possesses one from thence 
which was built in the midst of a fiowering rhododendron — one beautiful object 
within another. Harley appears to have considered that it fed, at times, on 
the berries of the nightshade (Solanum dulcamara). Mr. Davenport finds its 
nest and eggs every year, and says that it occasionally lays six eggs ; and at 
Belvoir, where it is common, building in rhododendron and other bushes and 
trees, I have procured nests and eggs for the Museum. Two clutches of eggs 
from thence are very dissimilar in shape, one being long, pointed, and spotted 
at the large end only, the other short, obtuse, and blotched irregularly over the 
whole surface, but principally at the larger end. 
I bought a melanic variety, in 1884, for the Museum, — a cage bird 
evidently fed on hemp-seed. 
In Rutland. — As in Leicestershire. 
PARROT CROSSBILL. Loxia pityopsittacus (Bechstein). 
A rare visitor to Britain, not remaining to breed. — Harley wrote : — “ On 
the authority of Mr. Bickley, of Melton Mowbray, it appears the Parrot Crossbill 
made a visit to Leicestershire in 1849.” With reference to this statement, the 
late Mr. R. Widdowson wrote me : — “ A pair of Parrot Crossbills, killed close to 
Melton, are in the Bickley collection.” Unfortunately, however, as before 
remarked, with two exceptions mentioned hereafter, the specimens in the 
Bickley collection are unlabelled. 
CROSSBILL. Loxia curvirostra, Linnaeus. 
An irregular and uncertain visitant from autumn to early spring, but has 
bred in the county. — Mr. Babington (Appendix ‘Potter,’ p. 67) said: — “In great 
