( 559 ) 

 THE COMMON CROSSBILL. 



LOXIA CURVIROSTRA, LiNN. 

 PLATE CXCVII. Male, Febj ALE, AND Young. 



This species I have found more abundant in Maine, and in the Bri- 

 tish provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, than any where else. 

 Although I have met with it as early as the month of August in the Great 

 Pine Forest of Pennsylvania, I have never seen its nest. Many persons 

 in the State of Maine assured me that they had found it on pine-trees in 

 the middle of winter, and while the earth was deeply covered with snow. 

 The people employed in cutting pine timber at that season, when it is 

 easier to remove the logs to the rivers, in which they are subsequently 

 floated when the ice melts, have very frequently told me, that on felhng 

 a tree they have caught the young Crossbills, which had been jerked out 

 of their nest. Several of my acquaintances in that district promised to 

 send me nests, eggs, and young ; but as yet, I am sorry to say, none of 

 them have reached me. While at Labrador I was much disappointed at 

 not finding a single bird of this species, although the White-winged 

 Crossbill was tolerably abundant there ; and in Newfoundland matters 

 were precisely the same. 



The Crossbill lives in flocks, composed apparently of several fami- 

 lies, and is an extremely gentle and social bird. They are easily ap- 

 proached, caught in traps, or even killed with a stick. So unsuspicious 

 are they with respect to man, that they not unfrequently come up to the 

 very door of the woodman's cabin, and pick the mud with which he has 

 plastered the spaces between the logs of which it is composed. When the 

 huts are raised on blocks, to prevent dampness, they are often seen under 

 them, picking up the earth for want of better food, while the weather is 

 at its coldest. 



Their food consists principally of the seeds contained in the cones of 

 different species of the pine and fir. In the pine forests of Pennsylvania 

 I saw them feeding on those of the white pine, the hemlock, and the 

 spruce, as well as on various kinds of fruits. Wherever an apple-tree 

 bore fruit, the Crossbills were sure to be on it, cutting the apples to pieces 

 in order to get at the seeds, in the manner of our Parakeet of the south. 



