Professor Ansted includes the Bullfinch in his list, but oddly enough only marks it as occurring in Guernsey and Sark, although Mr. Gallienne, in his remarks published with the list, says—­“The Bullfinch occasionally breeds in Jersey, but is rarely seen in Guernsey,” so far agreeing with Miss Carey’s note in the ‘Zoologist,’ but he does not add anything about Sark.  There is no specimen in the Museum.

72.  COMMON CROSSBILL. Loxia curvirostra, Linnaeus.  French, “Bec-croise,” “Bec-croise commun.”—­The Crossbill is an occasional visitant to all the Islands, and sometimes in considerable numbers, but, as in England, it is perfectly irregular as to the time of year it chooses for its visits.  Mr. MacCulloch writes me word—­“The Crossbill is most uncertain in its visits.  Many years will sometimes pass without a single one being heard of.  When they do come it is generally in large flocks.  I have known them arrive in early autumn, and do great havoc amongst the apples, which they cut up to get at the pips.  Sometimes they make their appearance in the winter, seemingly driven from the Continent by the cold.”

My first acquaintance with the Crossbill was in Sark on the 25th of June, 1866, when I saw a very fine red-plumaged bird in a small fir-plantation in the grounds of the Lord of Sark.  It was very tame, and allowed me to approach it very closely.  I did not see any others at that time amongst the fir-trees, though no doubt a few others were there.  On my return to Guernsey on the following day I was requested by a bird-catcher to name some birds that were doing considerable damage in the gardens about the town.  Thinking from having seen the one in Sark, and from his description, that the birds might be Crossbills, I asked him to get me one or two, which he said he could easily do, as the people were destroying them on account of the damage they did.  In a day or two he brought me one live and two dead Crossbills, and told me that as many as forty had been shot in one person’s garden.  The two dead ones he brought me were one in red and the other in green plumage, and the live one was in green plumage.  This one I brought home and kept in my aviary till March, 1868, when it was killed by a Hawk striking it through the wires.  It was, however, still in the same green plumage when it was killed as it was when I brought it home, though it had moulted twice.

The Crossbill did not appear at that time to be very well known in Guernsey, as neither the bird-catcher nor the people in whose gardens the birds were had ever seen them before or knew what they were.  This year (1866), however, appears to have been rather an exceptional year with regard to Crossbills, as I find some recorded in the ‘Zoologist’ from Norfolk, the Isle of Wight, Sussex, and Henley-on-Thames, about the same time; therefore there must have been a rather widely-spread flight.  From that time I did not hear any more of Crossbills in the Islands till December, 1876, when Mr. Couch sent me a skin of one in reddish plumage, writing at the same time to say—­“The Crossbill I sent from its being so late in the season when it was shot—­the 11th of December; there were four of them in a tree by Haviland Hall.  I happened to go into the person’s house who shot it, and his children had it playing with.”