WHITE-WINGED CROSSBILL. 221 



certain particulars, however, we have of its nidification are 

 those given by Messrs. Baird, Brewer and Kidgway, in their 

 ' Birds of North America', from a nest and egg taken, in 

 1868, by Dr. A. Adams at Frederickton, in New Brunswick. 

 The egg is said to be ' ' pale blue, the large end rather thickly 

 spattered with fine dots of black and ashy-lilac", and to 

 measure *8 by *56 in. The nest is described as being 

 " deeply saucer-shaped, and composed of a rather thin wall 

 of fibrous pale-green lichens, encased on the outside with 

 spruce twigs, and thinly lined with coarse hairs and fine 

 shreds of inner bark. Its external diameter is a little less 

 than four inches, the rim being almost perfectly circular ; 

 the cavity is an inch and a half deep by two and a half 

 broad." 



Though some examples winter in the Dominion, the 

 majority seem to migrate southward as autumn approaches, 

 and in the Eastern States of the Union to reach Pennsylvania, 

 where, rare as their occurrence was in Wilson's days, they 

 have since been found more abundantly (Proc. Ac. N. S. 

 Phil. 1854, p. 203). In spring they mostly return to the 

 north, and Audubon in May saw many on the rocky islands 

 in the Bay of Fundy, and again encountered a flock while 

 crossing the Gulf of St. Lawrence, all evidently journeying 

 northward. This Crossbill was not observed in the United 

 States to the west of the Mississippi until 1860, when it 

 was found in June by Dr. Hayden on the Wind Kiver 

 Mountains, and west of the Kocky Mountains it has not 

 been known to occur south of British Columbia. In beha- 

 viour it is like all the other Crossbills, and its tameness and 

 pleasing song have been noticed by many transatlantic 

 observers. Its note has been syllabled " week." 



In all its plumages this bird so closely resembles the pre- 

 ceding that a general description of them is rendered unne- 

 cessary. By colour alone it would seem almost impossible 

 to distinguish the young of either sex, and the females of the 

 one form, from corresponding examples of the other, except 

 that in the bird of the New World the light edging of the 

 tail-feathers is seldom visible, while in that of the Old this 



