The Natural History of Ireland/Volume 1/The Two-banded Crossbill

THE TWO-BANDED CROSSBILL. European White-winged Crossbill.

Loxia bifasciata, Nilsson.

Has once been obtained.

The first notice of the occurrence of this species in the British islands, is that of Templeton, who communicated to the Linnean Society of London a note of one having been " shot at Grenville, near Belfast, January the 11th, 1802 An extract at p. 276, in- forms us, that the common crossbill was particularly numerous in the southern half of Ireland that season. M. Le Baron De Selys Longchamps, in his excellent " Faune Belge," is of opinion, that the bird called L. leucoptera, in works on British Ornithology, is instead the L. bifasciata, which has been until lately confounded with it: he describes the differences between them (p. 77), and figures the heads and bills of the two species. The latter has been obtained during winter, in Sweden, Germany, and Belgium : the former is a North- American species, which has been killed in England within the last few years . Footnote 1 As Mr. Templeton made a coloured drawing of the specimen, I was desirous that this should be seen by M. De Selys, on his visit to Belfast in the autumn of 1844, but unfortunately it had been taken by Mr. Robert Templeton, along with many other delineations and papers of his father's to Ceylon. The drawing has, however, by the kind attention of my friend just named, been since sent to me from that island, and proves the Irish specimen to have been the L. bifasciata, as described and figured by M. De Selys : it represents the bird of a greenish-olive on the head and back, with dark-brownish markings ; rump yellow ; tail-feathers blackish, bordered with yellow ; entire under plumage yellow, with dark streaks ; two conspicuous white bands across the wings, and the wing-feathers generally (but not all) tipped with white. The form of the bill is identically that of L. bifasciata.

But few individuals of the white-winged crossbill have been obtained in England or Scotland.

Footnote 1 Noticed by Yarrell in the Zoological Proceedings, since the 2nd edit, of his Brit. Birds was published in 1845.