A PUZZLE IN BIRDS 



whose very presence pictured before my inflamed imag- 

 ination the boreal solitudes in their silent, icy grandeur, 

 as did just once the rare Evening Grosbeak. 



And the crossbills ! I was out sleio;h ridins; in Brook- 

 line and was driving on a road that led through a 

 wooded estate, when I noticed a group of birds on a 

 limb of a pine tree which extended out low over the 

 road. I stopped the horse almost under the strange 

 birds. Some were dull red or pink, some greenish, and 

 a few of each sort had white bars on their wings. They 

 were a mixed flock of White-winged and Red Cross- 

 bills, birds the points of whose upper and lower mandi- 

 bles of the bill cross one another. It would appear, 

 with this seemingly awkward arrangement, as though 

 they could not eat; yet here they were skillfully ex- 

 tracting the seeds from the pine cones, their favorite 

 diet. For five minutes or so I fairly devoured those 

 rare birds with my eager eyes. 



The rest of that winter I revelled in the Northern 

 birds, but it was not till several years afterward that I 

 saw any more, so irregular are their occurrences. How- 

 ever^ they did reach us occasionally, and some years I 

 held tryst with the crossbills and siskins in summer 

 up in their Northern homes in the Maritime Provinces 

 of Canada. One season they stayed with us very late. 

 Pine Siskins visited the larch trees in my garden in 

 May, and on the seventh of May I was amazed, while 

 looking for birds in a pine grove, to have a flock of 

 White-winged Crossbills fly up from the ground and 



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