188 TH E COMMON CROSSBILL. 



Much has been said and repeated respecting the colours of this species as 

 connected with the differences of sex and age. Accustomed as I am to judge 

 of every thing relating to ornithology on the spot where I can procure 

 specimens!, and examine them with all necessary care, I have not failed to 

 employ this method in the present case, and I now give it as my opinion 

 that, although learned naturalists may contradict what I am about to state, it 

 will eventually be acknowledged to be correct. I have shot as many speci- 

 mens of this Crossbill as I could desire, and on opening perhaps more than 

 sixty, which I should suppose enough to know their sexes, in early spring, 

 summer, autumn and winter, I found the young of the year in July invari- 

 ably similar to the females which had evidently laid eggs that season, 

 excepting that they were smaller, and had their tints duller. The males, 

 which had either been paired or not that season, but which, however, were 

 older than the first (a fact easily ascertained by the inspection of their 

 stronger bills, legs and claws, and their stronger, harder and tougher flesh,) 

 shewed a considerable quantity of red mixed with yellow on the rump, head 

 and breast. Others having equal appearances of age were of a dull olive- 

 yellow, and proved to be females. In such specimens as had the bill very 

 much worn on its edges, and the legs and feet diseased from the adhesion of 

 the resinous matter of the fir trees, on which they spend most of their time, 

 and roost on them at night, were of a bright brick-red in certain lights, 

 changing alternately to carmine or vermilion, on the whole upper parts of 

 the body. Females bearing the same appearances of old age, were as I have 

 represented them in my plate. 



The following note respecting this bird is from my friend Dr: T. M. 

 Brewer. "Among a number of eggs which I obtained from Coventry, 

 Vermont, there was one of the Common Crossbill, a description of which, it 

 never having been before procured by any naturalist, to my knowledge, and 

 consequently never having been described, will, I doubt not, be acceptable. 

 It measures thirteen-sixteenths of an inch in length, by three-eighths in 

 breadth. At the larger end it is broadly rounded, and the smaller end forms 

 a complete and abrupt cone. The ground-colour is a greenish-white, pretty 

 thickly covered, more especially at the large end, with very brown spots. 

 Crossbills appeared in large flocks, in the winter of 1832, in the pine woods 

 near Fresh Pond, and with them two or three White-winged Crossbills. 

 They were very noisy, rarely quiet for many moments at a time. Before 

 this winter I have been told that the White-wing was the most common, 

 though never very abundant. 



Male, 7, 10. 



From Maryland eastward and northward, to lat. 52. Breeds in Pennsyl- 



