74 THE WHITE-WINGED CROSSBILL. 
When we recall that the normal food of the Crossbill is pine-seeds, this 
craving for Nature’s solvent is readily understandable. 
Crossbills give out an intermittent rattling cry, or excited titter, tew, 
tew, tew, while feeding. They 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, altho 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 firs 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 
compactly built and much more heavily lined. It is composed of twigs and 
rootlets closely interwoven, and boasts an inner quilt of felted cow-hair nearly 
half an inch in thickness. ‘The female Crossbill exhibits a singular devotion 
to duty, 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.—Wale: 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 
