CROSSBILL. 
135 
ford, in the same county, and near Saffron Walden, Essex, 
in a garden in the town, and in Orwell Park, near Ipswich, 
in the year 1822. Instances of its doing so are also recorded 
in the Messieurs Sheppard and Whitear’s ‘Catalogue of the 
Norfolk and Suffolk Birds;’ likewise in Durham by Mr. 
Joseph Duff; and in Devonshire a pair built at Ogwell 
House, near Newton, the seat of Thomas William Taylor, 
Esq., in April, 1839, as recorded by W. R. Hall Jordan, 
Esq., of Teignmouth; and another pair in Holt Forest, 
Hampshire; also at Broome, the seat of Sir H. Oxenden, 
Bart., in Kent. 
They have been observed with us in some parts of the 
kingdom in every month of the year, but mostly in those 
of the winter and spring. They appear in all places to be 
of a roving wandering disposition, uncertain in their move¬ 
ments, appearing suddenly here and there in large numbers, 
and as suddenly disappearing again; but doubtless they are 
guided by some instinct, the cause or the object of which is 
unknown to us. 
These birds are by no means shy, and are very easily 
tamed: in one instance, namely in the aviary of Lord Bray- 
hrooke, at Audley End, near Saffron Walden, Essex, they 
have been known to build and lay. In confinement they 
shew their connection with the Parrots by climbing about 
their cage in all directions, both wdth beak and claws; even 
when dead they still cling on, with the tenacity of life, to 
the bough which has afforded them a resting-place—‘ the 
ruling passion strong in death.’ They are reckoned very 
good eating on the continent, and are sold for the purpose in 
considerable numbers. 
Their flight is undulated, and at the same time quick and 
rapid. 
Their food consists of the seeds of the various species of 
fir trees, as also at times those of the apple, the mountain 
ash, the alder, the hawthorn, and others, if need be even 
those of the thistle: sand and small fragments of stone are 
also swallowed. In extracting the seeds from the smaller 
cones of the larch, and others of the pines, they frequently, 
having first cut one off from the tree with their bill, hold it 
firmly against a branch between the claws of one or both 
feet, after having flitted with it to some neighbouring 
hough, or removed to the nearest convenient part of the 
one they are on. The sound of the cracking of the cones 
