240 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 
dingy brown. No white-winged crossbills seemed 
to be among them. Three months before, on a 
cold dewy morning in September, I stood on 
this spot and saw a flock of thirty crossbills in 
these same trees. Then a number of them were 
feeding in the edge of the pasture at a place 
where cattle had been salted in a shallow trough. 
I saw the birds tearing off fibres from the wood 
of the trough, so eager were they to get the salt 
which the wood had absorbed. This morning 
the salt trough was covered with snow, save one 
edge which protruded; but all around it the 
crossbills had trodden the snow into a path, 
showing that they were still salt-hungry. Act¬ 
ing upon this hint, I sprinkled the ground with 
grain and rock salt; but although birds were in 
all the trees, they paid no heed to my offerings. 
After watching the crossbills for nearly an 
hour we walked westward. The birds had been 
more restless than we. Few of them remained 
still more than two or three minutes at a time. 
With sharp calls the crossbills would dash off, 
followed by the finches, and together, or in scat¬ 
tered detachments, they would wheel from one 
quarter of the heavens to another, perhaps re¬ 
turning in a moment to the same perch, perhaps 
vanishing in distance, not to reappear for many 
minutes. All the time that they were on the 
wing the air was full of their fragments of music. 
