1 66 OUR WINTER BIRDS 



us during the winter, the name "Crossbill" will prob- 

 ably at once occur to you. 



Should you have cone-bearing trees about your 

 home, you are just as likely to see Crossbills there 

 as in the pines, spruces or hemlocks of a distant 

 forest; but cones they must have, for on their seeds 

 they feed almost exclusively. 



No one can say when the Crossbills will come. 

 Years may pass without one being seen ; then, some 

 autumn, the country will be overrun with them. At 

 once the weather-wise will predict an unusually severe 

 winter under the belief that the birds have been 

 driven south by exceptionally cold weather. But 

 given an abundance of food and it's little the Cross- 

 bills care about the weather. It is not low tempera- 

 ture, ice and snow that makes them desert their 

 usual winter quarters in the coniferous trees of north- 

 ern New England and Canada — it is hunger that 

 sends them south. 



The coming of Crossbills is not, then, a sign of 

 approaching cold, but an indication that the crop 

 of cones, on which they are dependent for food, has 

 failed. 



The Crossbill's bill looks as though it were de- 

 formed ; but here, also, we must not form an opinion 

 too hastily. Watch him force it between the scales 

 of the spruce cones, and with a dejstrou* motion twist 



