CROWBAR VERSUS CROSS-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 Bab stance sane 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 usethe 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 Douglassii), that I cut from the 
crops of ‘ Clark’s Crows;’ indeed it is next to 
