328 THE ANIMALS OF ARCTIC AMERICA AND CANADA 



favourite hunting-grounds are on the banks of pools and narrow water-courses. 

 Fish forms the favourite food of these animals, but only such as have drifted 

 ashore or have been left in shallow pools are devoured, for although good swimmers 

 raccoons are unable to dive. Besides fish, molluscs, and crabs, raccoons eat insects, 

 frogs, fresh- water tortoises and their eggs, birds' eggs, and birds, especially 

 domesticated fowls. They also catch and kill mice, while their vegetable food 

 includes nuts, fruit, and corn. 



Among other Canadian mammals, apart from those more 

 characteristic of the United States, a few bats deserve mention. One 

 of these, the silver-haired bat (Lasionycteris noctivagans), is brown above with 

 silvery white tips to the hairs of the back, and has a white spot at the base of 

 each ear. This bat ranges from California to Hudson Bay in the north, and from 

 the Atlantic to the Pacific coast, while it extends farther north than any other 

 American representative of the order. In habits it is specially distinguished by its 

 predilection for the neighbourhood of large sheets of water ; and in some districts 

 keeps so exclusively over water, that of hundreds flying about perhaps only two or 

 three are seen beyond the limits of the lake or pool. Occasionally, however, these 

 bats are encountered in thick forest, busily hunting for insects in all directions. The 

 silver-haired bat is a migratory species, as is likewise the hoary bat (L. cinerea), 

 whose range extends from Nova Scotia to Chile. 



The birds of the Canadian province belong partly to genera 

 Perching Birds. . . l ,,,.?. 



represented in the north of Asia and Europe and partly to distinctive 



American types, many of the species being more characteristic of the United 

 States, and therefore better referred to in a subsequent chapter. Among note- 

 worthy types, the ruby-crest or ruby-crown (Regulus calendula) breeds in the 

 forests of Arctic America as well as in those of the mountains of Arizona and 

 Colorado, and is famous for its song, which is said to equal that of the canary in 

 fulness of sound and to surpass it in variety and sweetness. The horned lark, a 

 bird likewise common to the Eastern Hemisphere, and inhabiting the higher 

 mountains, probably ranges as far south as the ruby-crest, although chiefly found 

 in more northern latitudes. The same is the case with two other birds of the Old 

 World, namely, the snow-bunting and the Lapland bunting, both of which extend 

 farther south on the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains. The white-winged cross- 

 bill (Loxia leucoptera) does not range quite so far north as its Old World relative, 

 from which it is distinguished by darker plumage and the broader white bands on 

 the wings. An Old World compatriot of the banded cross-bill, the pine grosbeak, also 

 belongs to the breeding-birds of North America. The Canadian linnets, like the 

 grosbeak, are identical with the European and Siberian species ; but the American 

 siskins are distinct. Of the latter, the pine-siskin (C/trysomitris pinus) resembles 

 the females of the European species. Another American finch, inhabiting the 

 higher north, is the shore-finch (Leucosticte littoralis), which belongs to a genus 

 comprising about half a dozen species, and also represented in the north of Asia. 

 The nutcrackers, again, are represented in the Eastern as well as in the Western 

 Hemisphere, their American representative, the so-called Clarke's crow (Nucifraga 

 columbiana), inhabiting the west side of North America, where it frequents the 



