272 Peabody, Crossbills of Northeastern Wyoming. [julv 



and March. By all record, the utmost we have to swear by is the 

 vague statement by the late Professor Knight, of the University of 

 Wyoming, that, "in 1897, while in the Bear Lodge Mountain, [he] 

 saw [the Bendire Crossbills] in flocks of several hundred"; that it 

 was "the 24th of July"; and that "the young were full grown." 

 (Univ. Wyoming Bull., No. 55, p. 120). (It is not impertinent to 

 add, that never, under any circumstances, do we in our day, see, 

 on the Bear Lodge Mountain, flocks of crossbills exceeding fifty 

 in number.) 



With these inconclusive data for his only guide the writer, dur- 

 ing the spring and early summer of 1904, made diligent search for 

 the nests of the Sierra Crossbill; spurred on, with quickened 

 enthusiasm, by the spirited chatterings and the ardent searches 

 for unexhausted pine cones on the part of ever-present and often- 

 numerous birds. And yet the writer does not recall a single in- 

 stance of any act remotely interpretable as connected with nesting 

 or the care of the young during the entire season of 1904. On 

 December 20, 1904, however, one remarkably sunny and mild day, 

 just before sunset, a most beautiful but previously unheard song 

 came wafted, ventriloquially, to my back door from some near- 

 at-hand bull-pine. The singer was sought out and proved to be a 

 male Bendire Crossbill. He was sitting on the very top of a small 

 pine, quite absorbed in his own tone-productions. For the warb- 

 lings were real tones, though decidedly weak, fitful and soliloquial. 

 They might be characterized as weak but immeasurably sweeter 

 paraphrases of the brilliant song that L. c. mi7ior sings, atop the 

 tall spruces of Saint Louis County, Minnesota, during early June. 



Scanty attention was vouchsafed the crossbills during the time 

 intervening between December 20, 1904, and the first of February, 

 1905. Oblivious of the fact that wonderful and fascinating events 

 might be going on, the while, in the crossbill world near by, the 

 writer patiently awaited the time indicated in the books for the 

 probable celebration of the nuptials of his very interesting crossbill 

 friends. On the early morning of February 2, 1905, the writer 

 made the following record in his notes: "This morning, at eight 

 o'clock, with the thermometer at thirty degrees below zero, I saw 

 one of a small flock of about eight crossbills feeding another. The 

 feeder proved to be a male; and I must hasten to look for nests; 

 if, even at so early a date, a crossbill is feeding his mate." 



