1576 THE PERCHING BIRDS 



While the males of the crossbills are gayly attired in scarlet-crimson and orange 

 plumage, green and yellow are the predominating hues of the females. Crossbills 

 inhabit the pine forests of both the Old and New Worlds, extending from Siberia to 

 the Himalayas in the Eastern Hemisphere, and in the Western ranging from Arctic 

 North America into Mexico. 



When wandering through the pine forests of Northern Scotland or Western 

 Norway, the cry of the crossbill (Loxia curvirostra} often greets the traveler 

 from among the fir cones, directing his attention to the bright-plumaged birds 

 skillfully extracting the seeds of the conifers, while hanging gracefully in every 

 variety of attitude. One such scene is firmly imprinted on our memory, where, 

 while the edge of a pine wood, richly carpeted with blaeberries, lay in the back- 

 ground, in the foreground a little flock of crossbills were swinging gayly round the 

 branches of an isolated forest tree; and visitors to Bournemouth will recall 

 memories of these birds among the pines which form their favorite nesting resort. 

 One of the most recent descriptions of the habits of the crossbill in the nesting 

 season is by Mr. Ussher, who writes that he has had unusually good opportunities 

 of observing these birds, since no less than four pairs built within a short distance 

 of his house. Among them, one was a male in the immature yellow plumage, 

 while the other three cock birds were red, or red mingled with brown. Early in 

 March one of these crossbills was observed carrying twigs to the top of a Scotch 

 fir, in which the nest was subsequently discovered, although it could only be seen 

 from the ground by a person standing immediately below it and looking straight up 

 through the tree against the sky. "This tree," writes Mr. Ussher, from whose 

 description the remainder of this account is abbreviated, " is the outer of a group, 

 and is bare of living branches to within a short distance of its top, which consists of 

 a mass of green, bending over from the west winds, in the midst of which the nest 

 was built among the thick tufts. The finder saw the crossbills visit it frequently 

 with building materials, and I saw several times the birds fly to and from it, and 

 recognized the male by his redness. This pair probably reared their young in 

 safety, for, on the tenth of May, a pair of crossbills were seen feeding their 

 young on larch trees in the vicinity of this nest. A second nest was subse- 

 quently discovered, which was in the top of a Scotch fir about two hundred and 

 fifty yards from the first. It was built in the fork formed by several small lateral 

 branches with the leader, which at that point takes a bend, and the nest, which is 

 small for so large a bird, might easily be mistaken from the ground for a knot or 

 enlargement of the crooked leader. It was placed in a perfect little cluster or bower 

 of small branches, and was composed externally of fine dead twigs of larch and 

 Scotch fir, and within them of green moss, interwoven with wool, a few horsehairs, 

 and flakes of finer bark. The birds used not to cease their call notes while flying to 

 a neighboring tree and thence into the nesting tree, and the call of the female was 

 heard apparently coming from the nest itself. It was like the syllables yep yep, or 

 yup yup, while that of the male is much sharper, like gip gip. In a young bird 

 taken from this nest the points of the mandibles were straight, not crossed, but the 

 edges of the upper one overlapped the lower on both sides. The down was all gone, 

 and the plumage exhibited dark spots on a lighter ground both on the upper and 



