i907 IV ] Peabody, Crossbills of Northeastern Wyoming. 275 



birds. On the evening of the date in question, at the end of a day 

 spent in the study of Pinon Jay nesting habits, a junco of doubtful 

 identity and interesting mien attracted my attention midway up the 

 side of a steep, heavily wooded canon near Newcastle. The junco 

 led me a merry race, but was overtaken just at the point where a 

 little gorge ran downward through the small pines. In a moment 

 a sharp, anxious chill-chill-chill note resounded, a few feet away 

 and quite above me, in the pines. A female crossbill was flitting 

 about, most excitedly, with tail a-jerk, quite English Sparrow fash- 

 ion. A prompt hiding amid scanty covert on my part made no 

 change in her goings and comings; quickly marking the spot, I 

 ran back a hundred yards for my note-books. On returning to the 

 crossbill site, all things near at hand were found to be silent and 

 deserted. A few moments of search, in the dim light, gave no clue, 

 but the instinct of telepathy proved a better help. In a very slender 

 six-inch pine, about sixteen feet high, something like a nest appeared 

 some twelve feet from the ground, slightly concealed by sparse pine 

 branchlets. At a sharp rap on the stem of the tree, the female 

 crossbill left the nest. The eager antics of the climber alarmed her 

 not a little, and she kept flying about, ever iterating her excited, 

 chill-chill-chill; a call which I had never heard before, save when, 

 a few weeks previously, a pair of birds assailed me with the same 

 call, in a canon bottom, after the loud, echoing discharge of my gun. 

 The crossbill nest contained two young. These, to the best of my 

 judgment, were two or three days old. The nest was, in all essen- 

 tials except that of the placing — which was in a semi- vertical 

 fork — like typical nests of the Pinon Jay. It was basally formed 

 of fine twigs and plant stems, and was lined with grass and hem- 

 pen fibers. The outer diameter is about seven inches; the inner 

 is one and one fourth inches, and the cavity two inches across. 

 While I was examining the nest and young, the mother disappeared; 

 and the delighted observer hastened away, for the night air was 

 chill for the callow young. On April .22, I found the mother 

 crossbill brooding. Upon a rap on the tree-stem, she flew away 

 and did not return. One young had disappeared, while the other 

 had doubled in size, during the interim of five days. On the day 

 following I found the nest deserted and empty. My surmise is, 

 that the Pinon Jays, which were passing continually by in their 



