182 VIRGINIA 



thought of doing anything else. For the 

 half-hour that I stayed by them — some 

 other interesting birds, a true migratory 

 wave, in fact, being near at hand — they 

 remained in that treetop without uttering a 

 syllable ; and two hours later, when I came 

 down the same path again, they had moved 

 but two trees away, and were still eating in 

 silence, paying absolutely no heed to me 

 as I walked under them. Many kinds of 

 northward-bound migrants were in the ceme- 

 tery woods. Perhaps these ravenous cross- 

 bills 1 were of the party. I took them for 

 stragglers, at any rate, not remembering at 

 the time that birds of their sort are believed 

 to have bred, at least in one instance, within 

 the District of Columbia. Probably they 

 were stragglers, but whether from the for- 

 ests of the North or from the peaks of the 

 southern Alleghanies is of course a point 

 beyond my ken. 



So far as our present knowledge of them 

 goes, crossbills seem in a peculiar sense to 



1 Mr. H. W. Henshaw once told me about a flock that 

 appeared in winter in the grounds of the Smithsonian In- 

 stitution, so exhausted that they could be picked off the 

 trees like apples. 



