FAMILY Pringlllidae. 



White- winged A beautiful bird reminding one, perhaps, 

 of the partly yellow Canary, with two dis- 



Loxio leucoptera ^ J J 



L. 6.10 inches tmct white wing-bars and a very aesthetic 

 November 15 peach-blow pink breast, but with the same 

 to May ist awkward twisted bill which distinguishes its 

 foregoing relative. Another winter visitant erratic in time 

 and season and less common than the other bird. Bradford 

 Torrey mentions meeting him in the autumn (just previous 

 to 1902) in Franconia, New Hampshire: "The common 

 red ones were always here . . . and on more than one visit 

 I had found the rarer and lovelier White-winged species. 

 ... I went into the woods along the path, and there, 

 presently, I discovered a mixed flock of Crossbills red 

 ones and White-wings, feeding so quietly that till now I 

 had not suspected their presence." My own acquaintance 

 with the White-wing was later, in 1906, '08 in Cambridge 

 and northern New Jersey; in both instances I obtained 

 only fragmentary notations of chirps and twitterings which 

 could be no index of the possibilities of the full song. The 

 visitations of these birds in New York State were in 1848, 

 '64, '74, '78, '82, '88, '90, '93, '96, '97, '99 and 1906. The 

 colors of the White-wing are, dull rose-red or pink, brighter 

 on the head and rump, more or less barred with sepia black 

 on the back, wings and tail sepia black, the former with 

 two conspicuous white bars, the under parts nearly white. 

 Nest of twigs, strips of bark, and mosses lined with softer 

 materials and hair, usually built in the forking branch of a 

 conifer, well up from the ground. Egg, pale greenish blue 

 spotted near the larger end with umber brown and laven- 

 der. The range of the species is similar to that of the Red 

 Crossbill, it breeds more sparingly in the White and Adiron- 

 dack Mountains than the latter. 



The nuptial song of the White-winged Crossbill is 

 reported as far sweeter and more melodious than that of 

 its more familiar relative, a low, soft warble similar to the 

 song of the Redpoll, a series of clearly whistled notes like 

 those in the song of a strong-voiced Canary. My records 

 which follow are scarcely that kind of singing, but they 

 are the characteristic call notes which I caught in the 

 Harvard Botanic Garden, Cambridge, and in the open 

 country of northern New Jersey. 

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