32 FRINGILLID.E. 



which are white, spotted with yellowish. The young leave 

 the nest in June, and are soon able to join the parent birds 

 in their autumnal migration. In the northern countries, 

 where these birds are very numerous, when a deep snow 

 has covered the ground, they appear to lose all sense of 

 danger, and by spreading some favourite food, may be 

 knocked down with sticks, or even caught by hand while 

 busily engaged in feeding. Their manners are also in other 

 respects very similar to those of the Common Crossbill."" 



Dr. Richardson states that this bird " inhabits the dense 

 white spruce forests of the North American fur countries, 

 feeding principally on the seeds of cones. It ranges through 

 the whole breadth of the continent, and probably up to the 

 sixty-eighth parallel, where the woods terminate, though 

 it was not observed by us higher than the sixty-second. 

 It is mostly seen on the upper branches of the trees, and 

 when wounded, clings so fast, that it will remain sus- 

 pended after death. In September it collects in small 

 flocks, which fly from tree to tree, making a chattering 

 noise ; and in the depth of winter it retires from the coast 

 to the thick woods of the interior." 



Mr. Audubon, in his fourth volume of American Orni- 

 thological Biography, now just published, says, " I found 

 this species quite common on the islands near the entrance 

 of the Bay of Fundy, which I visited early in May 1833. 

 They were then journeying northwards, although many 

 pass the whole year in the northern parts of the State of 

 Maine, and the British provinces of New Brunswick and 

 Nova Scotia ; where, however, they seem to have been over- 

 looked, or confounded with our Common American Cross- 

 bill. Those which I met with on the islands before- 

 mentioned were observed on their margins, some having 

 alighted on the bare rocks ; and all those which were 



