294 WHITE-WINGED CROSSBILL. . 
WHITE-WINGED CROSSBILL.— CURVIROSTRA 
LEUCOPTERA. — Fie. 142. 
Turton, Syst. i. p. 515. 
LOXIA LEUCOPTERA. — Gmerin.* 
Loxia leccoptera, Bonap. Synop. p. 117. 
Tus is a much rarer species than the preceding; though found 
frequenting the same places, and at the same seasons ; differing, how- 
ever, from the former in the deep black wings and tail, the large bed 
of white on the wing, the dark crimson of the plumage; and a less 
and more slender conformation of body. The bird represented in 
Fig. 142 was shot in the neighborhood of the Great Pine Swamp, in 
the month of September, by my friend Mr. Ainsley, a German 
naturalist, collector in this country for the emperor of Austria. The 
individual of this species mentioned by Turton and Latham, had 
evidently been shot in moulting time. The present specimen was a 
male in full and perfect plumage. 
The White-winged Crossbill is five inches and a quarter long, and 
eight inches and a quarter in extent; wings and tail, deep black, the 
former crossed with two broad bars of white; general color of the 
plumage, dark crimson, partially spotted with dusky ; lores and frontlet, 
pale brown ; vent, white, streaked with black; bill, a brown horn color, 
the mandibles crossing each other as in the preceding species, the 
lower sometimes bending to the right, sometimes to the left, usually 
to the left in the male, and to the right in the female, of the American 
Crossbill. The female of the present species will be introduced as 
soon as a good specimen can be obtained, with such additional facts 
relative to their manners as may then be ascertained. 
* Bonaparte has fulfilled Wilson’s promise, and figured the female of this spe- 
cies, with some valuable remarks, regarding its first discovery and habits. From 
these it eipeatt to be very like its congeners, performing its migrations at uncer- 
tain periods and in various abundance, enjoying the pine forests, though not further 
known by any destructive propensities among orchards. It may be looked upon 
yet as exclusively North American. The only record of its being found in another 
country is in extracts from the minute-book of the Linnean Society for 1803.“ Mr. 
Templeton, A. L.S., of Orangegrove, near Belfast, in a letter to Mr. Dawson Tur- 
ner, F. L. S., mentions, that the White-winged Crossbill, Loxia falcirostra of 
Latham, was shot within two miles of Belfast, in the month of January, 1802. It 
wasa female, and perfectly resembled the figure in Dixon’s Voyage tothe North- 
west Coast of America.” Such isthe only record we have of this bird as a British 
visitor. When Ireland becomes more settled, and her naturalists more devoted to 
actual observation, we mzy hear more of L, leuccntera, Cypselus melba, &c. Bona- 
parte, in his description a” the female, has enterea fully into the réasons for adopting 
the specific name of leuc ~“era. —Ep. 
