WHITE- WINGED CROSSBILL. 



43 



differing, however, 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 the plate was shot in the 

 neighbourhood 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 colour of the plumage dark crimson, partially spotted 

 with dusky ; lores and frontlet, pale brown ; vent, white, 

 streaked with black ; bill, a brown horn colour, 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. 



its being found in another country is in extracts from the minute book 

 of the Linnsean Society for 1803. " Mr Templeton, A.L.S. of Orange- 

 grove, near Belfast, in a letter to Mr Dawson Turner, 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 was a 

 female, and perfectly resembled the figure in Dixon's Voyage to the 

 North-west Coast of America." Such is the 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 may hear more of 

 L. leucoptera, Cypselus melba, &c. Bonaparte, in his description of the 

 female, has entered fully into the reasons for adopting the specific name 

 of leucoptera. — Ed. 



