OUR WINTER BIRDS. 125 
cones, for its bill does not seem half as stout. It is erratic 
in its visits, and its actions outside of the pine-trees are 
precisely like those of its cousin, the yellow-bird. 
All winter you may notice along the field-fences and in 
the grassy plats beside the railway, where weeds have gone 
to seed, active flocks of small, plainly-attired little birds, 
as cheerful as can be. These are our thistle-loving gold- 
finches, or yellow-birds, whose simple, sweet song and _bil- 
lowy flight were part of the delight of last summer, but 
which now have exchanged their gay livery of canary-yel- 
low and black for sober undress suits of Quaker drab. The 
goldfinches, as such, appear with the apple-blossoms, and 
are seen no later than the gathering of the fruit; but 
their seeming disappearance in autumn, and reappearance 
in spring, are only changes of plumage. Nevertheless, they 
are not so abundant in winter as in summer, many moving 
a little distance southward. The crossbills are naturally 
so named, for the tips of their mandibles slide by one an- 
other instead of shutting squarely together. Whether or 
not this peculiarity has been gradually acquired to meet 
the necessity of a peculiar instrument to twist open the 
cones and other tough pericarps, upon the contents of 
which they feed; or whether it is an accident perpetuated 
and made the best of; or whether the crossed bill was “ ere- 
