4 Bird -Lore 



"shapeless masses." All the nests observed held fresh eggs between January 

 22 and March 17. (An account of these nestings will be found in 'The Auk,' 

 1906, p. 339.) 



The writer spent man\- delightful hours, at all seasons of the }ear, making 

 as intimate studies as possible of the ways of the Crossbill {Loxia ciirvirostra 

 stricklandi) of Crook and Weston counties, Wyoming. Readers of Bird-Lore 

 who may care to go over, from a comparatively technical })oint-of-view, a partial 

 outlining of these studies will find them in 'The Auk,' for 1907, \). 271. A few 

 of the broader outlines of my study may here be briefly given. 



I found the Wyoming race of Crossbills exceedingly erratic and irregular. 

 In the matter of breeding, they appear — if that were possible — to be particuhirly 

 erratic. To state the case in its probable extreme: I have studied fledgling Cross- 

 bills, on the shale hills of Newcastle, Weston county, Wyoming, that were 

 probably hatched from eggs laid in November; and I have seen them feeding 

 callow young in July I 



In the very midst of the railway town of Newcastle, one still, extremely cold 

 morning (Februar\- 2), with a thermometer-registration of minus thirteen, I stood, 

 at eight o'clock, beneath a lone bull-pine sapling. Crossbills were cricketing 

 their crispy chirps overhead. Being quite used to this, I paid little heed, but 

 simply said: "Guess it must be nearly Crossbill nesting-time; that old male 

 seems to be feeding his mate." Ten days later, at the same hour, I stood at my 

 street-corner near the same spot, beneath a very small bull-pine sapling. (It 

 was but eight feet tall, at its very spire.) From amid its branches I heard a clam- 

 orous, rather mellow, Pee-tiv, pee-tiv-tiv, iterated by several birds. Glancing 

 up, I saw, to my dumb astonishment, a mother Crossbill alternatel}- feeding three 

 }-oung that were quite as large as herself. Bits of down still adhering to the feath- 

 ers of the backs of their crowns bespoke their juvenility, while the straightness 

 of their beak-commissures was most decidedly "diagnostic." 



There the trio perched, but four feet above my head. The mother, with 

 generic nonchalance, gave me no heed whatever.^ The bull-pine seeds which the 

 female Crossbill would alternately extract and dole (Uit, \)\ turns, to her progeny, 

 were not pre-digested. ^'et tliey were, quite as manifestly, macerated. (And later 

 studies convinced me that this feature of feeding was uniform, at almost all 

 stages of the growth of the young Crossbills.) 



During the weeks that followed, I repeatedly heard a note of mature Cross- 

 bills, previously unheard. It was an apparently excited, " Trip-trip-trip, ''^ re- 

 sembHng marvelously some intonations of that cheery, monotonal, '"kip," with 

 which the Arctic Three-toed Woodpecker beguiles his wintrv toils. Tlic "trip" 

 note of the Crossbills became inseparably (and seemingly with exclusivencss) con- 

 nected with nuptial excitation; and with probable parental apprehension. In- 

 deed, I long ex])ected the hearing of this note to become, for me, the harbinger 



'Robie W. Tufts once wrote me of touctiiriK, iind even actually strokinu, llie l)aik of a female White- 

 winded Crossbill, who was feedin.t; lier vounK. 



