$8 PINCHES, SPARROWS. ETC. 



Sparrows' nests are made of almost anything the birds 

 can carry and built in any place that will hold them. 

 The 4-7 finely speckled eggs are laid as early as March, 

 and several broods are raised. 



AMERICAN CROSSBILL 

 Loxia curvirostra minor. Case 2, Figs. 49, 50 



Crossbills have the mandibles crossed; the absence of wing* 

 bars distinguishes this species from the usually less common 

 White-winged Crossbill. L. 6i. 



Range. Nests from northern New England to Canada and 

 southward in the Alleghanies to northern Georgia. Winters irreg- 

 ularly southward, rarely as far as Florida and Louisiana. 



Washington, irregular W. V., sometimes abundant. Ossining, 

 irregular; noted in almost every month. Cambridge, of common 

 but irregular occurrence at all seasons. N. Ohio, irregular, 

 often common, sometimes breeds. Glen Ellyn, uncommon 

 and irregular, Oct. 20- June 11. SE. Minn., W. V., Oct. 25. 



Crossbills and Grosbeaks are among winter's chief 

 attractions. While the latter, as I have said above, will 

 leave their summer homes in coniferous forests to feed in 

 winter on the seeds of deciduous trees, the Crossbills 

 are less adaptable. They are specialists in cone-dissecting. 

 Their singularly shaped bills prevent them from eating 

 many kinds of food available to other birds, but no other 

 birds can compete with them in extracting the seeds from 

 cones. Having had too limited an experience with man 

 to have learned to fear him, they are so surprisingly tame 

 that I have known birds to be plucked from trees as one 

 would pick off the cones on which they were feeding. In 

 March, while the ground is still snow-covered, they lay 

 3-4 pale greenish, spotted eggs in a well-formed nest, 

 15-30 feet up in a coniferous tree. 



WHITE-WINGED CROSSBILL 



Loxia leucoptera. Case 2, Figs. 51, 52 



' Both sexes have white wing-bars and the male is of a paier, 

 Snore rosy red than the male of the American Crossbill. K fi. 



