92 THE SECOND BOOK OF BIRDS 
low ; one never knows where to find him. One 
year he will come with all his friends to a place, 
and the next year there will not be one there. 
The male is dull red, more or less streaked all 
over with brown. His mate is olive green, mot- 
tled and mixed with blackish. 
Crossbills go in flocks. They are usually seen 
among the evergreens, where they find their 
food. They are much attached to one another. 
I had a chance one summer to get well ac- 
quainted with a flock of American crossbills. I 
found them very odd in their manners. They 
had the queerest songs and calls of any bird I 
know. These were not musical, but sounded like 
such things as the squeaking of a wagon wheel 
or the sawing of wood. 
The birds were very fond of calling and sing- 
ing, and they kept up a constant chattering, 
as they flew from spruce to spruce. They spent 
most of their time on these trees, eating the 
seeds of the cones. 
The white-winged crossbill lives about as the 
red one does. But he has a really fine song. It 
is full of trills, something like a canary’s song. 
One of the odd things about these birds is 
their habit of nesting in winter. A Maine 
hunter was once shooting moose in the middle 
of January, when he came upon the nest of a 
