CEOWBAE VEESUS CEOSS-BILL. 127 



Its habits are strictly arboreal, its food the seeds 

 of the pine-trees. Watching a flock of these 

 busy, noisy seed-hunters, one notices at a glance 

 how curiously they hang on to the cones; and 

 five minutes' observation tells you what the claws, 

 so falcon-like in appearance, are for better than 

 a month's guessing. 



Clark's ' crows ' have, like the cross-bills, to get 

 out the seeds from underneath the scaly cover- 

 ings constituting the outward side of a fir cone ; 

 nature has not given them crossed-mandibles to 

 lever open the scales, but instead, feet and claws 

 that serve the purpose of hands, and apowerful bill, 

 like a small crowbar. To use the crowbar to advan- 

 tage, the cone needs steadying, or it would snap 

 at the stem and fall ; to accomplish this, one foot 

 clasps it, and the powerful claws hold it firmly, 

 whilst the other foot, encircling the branch, sup- 

 ports the bird, either back downward, head down- 

 ward, on its side, or upright like a woodpecker, the 

 long grasping claws being equal to any emergency : 

 the cone thus fixed and a firm hold maintained 

 on the branch, the seeds are gouged out from 

 under the scales. I have now a large packet of 

 seeds, some of which have been grown (the 

 seeds of Abies Dovglassii), that I cut from the 

 crops of ' Clark's Crows ; ' indeed it is next to 



