36 FRINGILLIDJ;. 



or adorning the naked branches of some distant, high, and 

 insulated tree. In the countries where they pass the sum- 

 mer, they build their nest on the limb of a pine, towards 

 the centre ; it is composed of grasses and earth, and lined 

 internally with feathers. The female lays five eggs, which 

 are white, spotted with yellowish. The young leave the 

 nest in .Tune, and are soon able to join the parent birds in 

 their autumnal migration. In the northern countries, where 

 these birds are very numerous, when a deep snow has 

 covered the ground, they appear to lose all sense of danger, 

 and by spreading some favourite food, may be knocked 

 down with sticks, or even caught by hand while busily en- 

 gaged in feeding. Their manners are also in other respects 

 very similar to those of the Common Crossbill." 



Sir John Richardson states that this bird " inhabits the 

 dense white spruce forests of the North- American fur 

 countries, feeding principally on the seeds of cones. It 

 ranges through the whole breadth of the continent, and 

 probably up to the sixty-eighth parallel, where the woods 

 terminate, though it was not observed by us higher than 

 the sixty-second. It is mostly seen on the upper branches 

 of the trees, and when wounded, clings so fast, that it will 

 remain suspended after death. In September it collects in 

 small flocks, which fly from tree to tree, making a chatter- 

 ing noise ; and in the depth of winter it retires from the 

 coast to the thick woods of the interior." 



Mr. Audubon, in his fourth volume of American Orni- 

 thological Biography, says, " I found this species quite 

 common on the islands near the entrance of the Bay of 

 Fundy, which I visited early in May, 1833. They were 

 then journeying northwards, although many pass the whole 

 year in the northern parts of the State of Maine, and the 

 British provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia ; 

 where, however, they seem to have been overlooked, or 



