BRITISH BIRDS. 
I32 
fimilar ; they likewife vary with the feafon and ac- 
cording to the age of the bird. Edwards paints 
the male with a rofe colour, and the female with 
a yellowifh green, mixed more or lefs with brown. 
Both fexes appear very different at different times 
of the year. 
The Crofs-bill is an inhabitant of the colder cli- 
mates, and has been found as far as Greenland. 
It breeds in Ruffia, Sweden, Poland, and Germa- 
ny, in the mountains of Switzerland, and among 
the Alps and Pyrenees, from whence it migrates in 
vafl flocks into other countries. It fometimes is 
met with in great numbers in this country, but its 
vifits are not regular,* as in lbme years it is rarely 
to be feen. Its principal food is faid to be the 
feeds of the pine tree ; it is obferved to hold the 
cone in one claw like the Parrot, and when kept in 
a cage has all the actions of that bird, climbing by 
means of its hooked bill, from the lower to the up- 
per bars of its cage. From its mode of fcrambling 
and the beauty of its colours, it has been called by 
fome the German Parrot. The female is faid to 
begin to build as early as January ; fhe places her 
nefl under the bare branches of the pine tree, fix- 
ing it with the refmous matter which exudes from 
that tree, and befmearing it on the outfide with the 
fame fubftance, fo that the melted fnow or rain 
cannot penetrate it. 
* We have met with it on the top of Blackfton-edge* between 
Roehdale and Halifax^ in the month of Auguft. 
