74 THE WHITE-WINGED CROSSBILL. 



AVhen we recall that the nurmal food of the Crossbill is pine-s.ceds, this 

 craving for Nature's solvent is readily understandable. 



Crossbills give out an intermittent rattling cry, or excited titter, tezv, 

 tezv, tezi', while feeding. Thev have also a flight note which consists of a 

 short, clear whistle ; and a flock composed of separately undulating indi- 

 viduals affords a pleasing sensation to- both eye and ear, as it rapidly passes. 

 The male is said to have sprightly whistling notes of a most agreeable char- 

 acter, generically related to that of the Pine Grosbeak, or Purple Finch, but 

 their exhibition must be rather rare. 



After all, there is something a bit uncanny about these cross-billed 

 creatures, and their eccentricities show nowhere in greater relief than in their 

 nesting habits. The quasi migrations of the bird are determined by the local 

 abundance of fir (or pine) cones. Like their food supply, the birds them- 

 selves may abound in a given section one year and be conspicuously absent 

 the next. Moreover, because there is no choice of season in gathering the 

 seed crop, the birds may nest whenever the whim seizes them : and this they 

 do from January to July, or even October. The communal life is maintained 

 in spite of the occasional defection of love-lorn couples ; and there is nothing 

 in the appearance of a flock of Crossbills in April to suggest that other such 

 are dutifully nesting. 



Mr. Bowles has never taken the eggs near Tacoma, altlin he has encoun- 

 tered half a dozen of their nests in twelve years, the only occupied one of 

 which we have record being found by a friend on the 25th of April, 1899. 

 It contained three half-incubated eggs, and was placed in one of a group of 

 small tirs in the prairie country, at an elevation of some twenty feet. The 

 nest rather closely resembles that of the California Purple Finch, but is more 

 compacth' built and much more heavilv lined. It is composed of twigs and 

 rootlets closely interwoven, and Iioasts an inner c|uilt of felted cow-hair nearly 

 half an inch in thickness. The female Crossbill exhibits a singular devotion 

 to dutv, once confessed, and in this case the collector had actually to lift her 

 from the eggs in order that he might examine them. 



No. 26. 



WHITE-WINGED CROSSBILL. 



A. O. U. No. 522. Loxia leucoptera Gmel. 



Description. — Mah': Rosy-red or carmine all over, save for grayish of 

 nape and black of scapulars, wings, and tail. The black of scapulars sometimes 

 meets on lower back. Two conspicuous white wing-bars are formed by the tips 

 of the middle and greater coverts. Bill slender and weaker than in preceding 



