Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 1 (1897).djvu/457

open spaces prevented my detecting even what colour they were, much less what species they belonged to, although the thought crossed my mind, Can they be Crossbills, and are the notes I am listening to the same as Longfellow calls "Songs, like legends, strange to hear"? I, however, was not long in doubt, for one of the birds descended from the tree in pursuit of a fallen cone, and there on the white sandy soil, only a few paces from me, was a beautiful specimen of the bird, in the orange-red plumage, with "marks of blood and holy rood," as the translated legend informs us. I was much interested in the occurrence, and in almost breathless silence watched it tear the cone to pieces—in a very parrot-like fashion—with its beak, holding the cone in position with one of its feet. I think I have read somewhere that the beak of this bird has been considered a deformity of nature, but the ease and dexterity with which the instrument was used on this occasion proved, I thought, its adaptability as a "means to an end." I watched the bird closely until it flew away to its companions in the branches above, and then I went and picked up the small cone upon which it had been working so intently, and found that the scale-like processes of the cone had merely been torn asunder (not severed from the central "core," as a Squirrel does its work), so that the immature seeds could be extracted by the scissors-like beak. I saw a number of male cones scattered beneath the trees similarly treated, but I am not at all prepared to state that Crossbills were the cause of their mutilation, for, strange to say, although I daily visited the spot both before and after the occurrence, I only once heard the birds, and did not see them again. I think I have heard that the species has been detected nesting in this particular neighbourhood, and although perhaps my present observation proves nothing either for or against that fact, yet it is interesting to know that a species we usually connect with more northern localities should occur so far south in the middle of summer; and yet it seems to me its occurrence here at such a time is not frequent, or else some of our ornithological peers (many no doubt visiting this well-known locality every season) would not have been silent on the point, and left it to my poor pen to describe. Of course it goes without saying that the majority of the cones were in a very unripe state, and consequently with seeds quite undeveloped, and perhaps that was partly the cause why the birds stayed so short a period in one particular spot. While wandering about in the woods one thing was very apparent, viz. the comparative abundance of the House Sparrow and the scarcity of the Squirrel (for one naturally expects to find this little rodent amongst its much-loved fir trees, especially as it is so common only a few miles away); but this seeming anomaly may be met in the fact of so many houses having sprung up in unlooked-for situations amongst the trees. As we are well aware, the bird delights in the proximity of human habitations, whilst the quadruped shuns them; or it may be that the scarcity of the latter is partly attributable to the