RARER BRITISH BIRDS. 



21 



WHITE-WINGED CROSSBILL. 



Loxia Leucoptera. GMELIN. 



THE White-winged Crossbill appears, from the account of 

 Wilson, to be of much rarer occurrence in America than the 

 common Crossbill, Loxia Curvirostra, though found frequenting 

 the same places at the same seasons. We are told in a work 

 lately published,* that this bird inhabits the dense white-spruce 

 forests of the fir countries, feeding, principally, on the seed of 

 the cone, which the form of its bill is particularly adapted to 

 extract. In the same work, also, we are told, that it ranges 

 through the whole breadth of the Continent, and, probably, up 

 to the sixty-eighth parallel, where woods cease ; though it was 

 not observed higher than the sixty-second. In winter it retires 

 from the coast into the interior. An account of a specimen of 

 this bird, shot near Belfast in January 1802, in the "Linnaean 



* The " Fauna Boreal! Americana," by Messrs. Richardson and 

 Swain son. 



