THE CROSSBILLS. 500 



On this continent we have the Common and the White- 

 winged Crossbills — two distinct species — the latter of which 

 is a little the smaller, having the red of the male noticeably 

 brighter, with bars of clear white on the wings, some of the 

 secondaries of which are also tipped with white, and the 

 wings and tail blacker. The two species of Crossbills in 

 Europe are quite similar to ours. 



In habit the Crossbills are about as peculiar as they are 

 in structure. Breeding in the extreme north of New 

 England and northward, they range, very irregularly, south- 

 ward as far as Philadelphia. In Western New York, we 

 may meet them, as winter stragglers, perhaps, once in four 

 or five years. Sometimes they occur in considerable flocks 

 in the bright days of autumn. The habits of the European 

 varieties seem to be equally irregular, so that the celebrated 

 naturalist, Dr. Brehm, used to call the Crossbills the gyp- 

 sies among birds, attributing their movements to scarcity or 

 abundance of their peculiar food. 



It is well demonstrated that in this country these birds 

 breed in winter, or early in spring. Concerning the nest of 

 the Common Crossbills, Audubon says : " 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 cut- 

 ting pine timber at that season, when it is easier to remove 

 the logs to the rivers in which they are subsequently floated 

 v^hen the ice melts, have very frequently told me that, on 

 felling a tree, they have caught the young Crossbills, which 

 have been jerked out of their nests." Mr. M. Chamber- 

 lain, of St. John, New Brunswick, a gentleman held in 

 esteem as a careful and enthusiastic observer, says in a 

 communication to the Ornithologist and Oologist of May, 

 1881 : "I think it was in the third week in January, 1875, 



