More Crossbills ? Get Stuffed !

At the risk of being accused of following the bizzare trend of exhibiting various dead things as seen on other blogs here is a 'curiousity' :

Found this on a random Taxidermy site whilst googling 'Scottish Crossbill'. Not sure if they are scotica, but a very realistic 'composition'. Personally, I prefer to see them flying around, but I suppose in the 19th century and early 20th this sort of 'collecting' was the norm.

There is a similar 'study' of a bird shot near Aboyne in the 1800's that is a good candidate for scotica. I will see if I can find it. ( UPDATE: I am struggling to find it again )

Meantime, here is an interesting specimen shot at Drumnadrochit ( great name):

In the absence of biometrics it is difficult to say what he is, but I could easily accept 'Parrot' type based on birds I have seen and handled. However, it could be a small bodied bird with an apparently big bill, so a tough one. Will try to find the details on this one too.

UPDATE. Here are the details:

Adult male, 2nd winter male, adult female & 1st winter female, 6 Dec 1925 (two), 6 Dec 1924 & 6 Dec 1925, Drumnadrochit (57°20'N, 04°30'W), Inverness, Scotland, United Kingdom.

So 4 birds shot in total. The location is not typical 'parrot' but given the month of the year they were shot it is possible that they were migrants, however over two successive years hints at a population. Possibly Scottish afterall.

Told you ( in a now hacker deleted previous post) that Boleskine House would have mad a fantastic base for crossbilling !