4S - AMERICAN CROSSBILL. 



waned the birds became none the less common, and in the mild mornings of early spring 

 time this species, as well as the Pine Grosbeak, would often be found in full song, fre- 

 quently on the same tree. As I now recall them, the song of the Grosbeak w^as a sub- 

 dued rambling warble, interrupted with w^histling notes ; that of the Crossbill bolder 

 and more pronounced as a song. During the third week in April a male was daily 

 heard singing about the same spot, and on the 22nd, in following up his notes, I came 

 upon the female busily at work upon a nest. Several times I w^atched it arrange a 

 burden of building materials, gathered from the ground but a few yards distant, in the 

 almost completed structure, w^hich on another visit a few^ days later appeared to be 

 finished, but was empty. On the 30th, however, it contained three eggs. On shaking 

 the tree the female fluttered from the nest, and w^hile I was ascending both birds flew 

 about me with notes of distress and alarm, the female approaching within a foot w^hen 

 the nest was reached, though her mate exercised a greater degree of caution. Notwith- 

 standing all this demonstration, however, the male bird (unquestionably of this pair) 

 was observed near the nest a short time afterward in full song. 



"The nest was placed in a tapering cedar of rather scanty foliage, about eighteen 

 feet from the ground, and w^as without any single main support, being built in a mass 

 of small tangled twigs, from which it was with difficulty detached. The situation could 

 scarcely have been more conspicuous, being close to the intersection of several roads 

 (all of them more or less bordered with ornamental evergreens), in plain sight of as 

 many residences, and constantly exposed to the view of passers-by. The materials of 

 its composition were of rather a miscellaneous character, becoming finer and more select 

 from without inwards. An exterior of bristling spruce twigs loosely arranged sur- 

 rounded a mass of matted shreds of cedar bark, which formed the principal body of the 

 structure, a few strips of the same appearing around the upper border, the whole suc- 

 ceeded on the inside by a sort of felting of finer material, which received the scanty 

 lining of black horse-hair, fine rootlets, grass stems, pieces of string, and two or three 

 feathers. This shallow felting of the inner nest can apparently be removed intact from 

 the body of the structure, which, besides the above mentioned materials, contained small 

 pieces of moss, leaves, grass, string, cottony substances, and the green foliage of cedar. 

 The nest, measured internally two and one half inches in diameter by over one and a 

 quarter in depth ; being in diameter externally about four inches, and rather shallow in 

 appearance. 



"The fresh eggs are in ground-color of a decided greenish tint, almost immaculate 

 on the smaller end, but on the opposite side with irregular spots and dottings of 

 lavender-brown of slightly varying shade, interspersed with a few heavy surface spots 

 of dark purple-brown. There is no approach in the arrangement of these to a circle, 

 but between the apex of the larger end, and the greatest diameter of the egg, is a fine 

 hair-like surface line ; in two examples it forms a complete though irregular circle, and 

 encloses the principal spots. In the other egg, which is the largest, this line is not quite 

 complete and the primary blotches are wanting, but the secondary markings are corre- 

 spondingly larger and more numerous. In. another egg there are two perfect figures of 

 ^ 3 formed on the sides by the secondary marks, one of them large and singularly sym- 

 metrical. The eggs measure rfespectively .74X.56, .75X.58, .78X.59." 



