188 
THE COMMON CROSSBILL. 
Much lias 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 vermillion, on the whole upper 
parts of the body. Females bearing the same appearance 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 ac- 
ceptable. 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 
