WHITE-WINGED CROSSBILL. 31 



America, in continuation of Wilson, page 88, " inhabits 

 during summer the remotest regions of North America, 

 and it is therefore extraordinary that it should not have 

 been found in the analogous climates of the old continent.* 

 In this, its range is widely extended, as we can trace it 

 from Labrador, westward to Fort de la Fourche, in lati- 

 tude 56, the borders of Peace River, and Montagu Island 

 on the North West coast, where it was found by Dixon. 

 Round Hudson's Bay it is common, and well known, pro- 

 bably extending far to the north west, as Mackensie ap- 

 pears to allude to it when speaking of the only land bird 

 found in the desolate regions he was exploring, which en- 

 livened with its agreeable notes the deep and silent forests 

 of those frozen tracts. It is common on the borders of 

 Lake Ontario, and descends in autumn and winter into 

 Canada, and the Northern and Middle States. Its migra- 

 tions, however, are very irregular. They are seldom ob- 

 served elsewhere than in pine swamps and forests, feeding 

 almost exclusively on the seeds of these trees, together 

 with a few berries. All the specimens I obtained had 

 their crops filled to excess entirely with the small seeds 

 of Pinus inops. They kept in flocks of from twenty to 

 fifty, when alarmed suddenly taking wing all at once, and 

 after a little manoeuvring in the air, generally alighting 

 again nearly on the same pines whence they had set out, 

 or adorning the naked branches of some distant, high, and 

 insulated tree. In the countries where they pass the sum- 

 mer, they build their nest on the limb of a pine, towards 

 the centre ; it is composed of grasses and earth, and 

 lined internally with feathers. The female lays five eggs, 



* C. L. Bonaparte was not then aware of the memoir of M. C. Gloger, which 

 appeared in the fourteenth volume of the Nova A eta, published at Bonne in 1828, 

 the same year in which the second volume of the Ornithology was published in 

 Philadelphia. 



