Crossbill Oddities The ways of that curious bird the Crossbill
seem to he growing odder and odder. Its movements, the dates of the flocking and pairing, are all odd. It has appeared, for example, outside Oxford at BoAr's Hill (sometimes called by the cynical a nest of singing birds), at Whipsnade and in Galloway ; and it has stopped for rather a brief while in all these places. For the most part these sudden movements take place in winter and in small flocks ; but the very oddest thing about these birds is that they are seen in small flocks at the breeding time in districts where they do not nest. Habitually they are the earliest of all our birds, building in February if not even earlier. They have become of late, in some few places, non-migrant, in the sense that a certain number nest regularly—in the pine woods of Norfolk and Suffolk, for example ; but they are also in the class of winter migrants, and no one can foretell with any certainty when they will appear, or in what districts or in what numbers.
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