OUR WINTER BIRDS. 125 



cones, for its bill does not seem half as stout. It is erratic 

 in its visits, and its actions outside of the pine-trees are 

 precisely like those of its cousin, the yellow-bird. 



All winter you may notice along the field-fences and in 

 the grassy plats beside the railway, where weeds have gone 

 to seed, active flocks of small, plainly -attired little birds, 

 as cheerful as can be. These are our thistle-loving gold- 

 finches, or yellow-birds, whose simple, sweet song and bil- 

 lowy flight were part of the delight of last summer, but 

 which now have exchanged their gay livery of canary-yel- 

 low and black for sober undress suits of Quaker drab. The 

 goldfinches, as such, appear with the apple -blossoms, and 

 are seen no later than the gathering of the fruit; but 

 their seeming disappearance in autumn, and reappearance 

 in spring, are only changes of plumage. Nevertheless, they 

 are not so abundant in winter as in summer, many moving 

 a little distance southward. The crossbills are naturally 

 so named, for the tips of their mandibles slide by one an- 

 other instead of shutting squarely together. Whether or 

 not this peculiarity has been gradually acquired to meet 

 the necessity of a peculiar instrument to twist open the 

 cones and other tough pericarps, upon the contents of 

 which they feed ; or w r hether it is an accident perpetuated 

 and made the best of ; or whether the crossed bill was " ere- 



