BIRD LIFE IN WASHINGTON 
117 
CROSSBILLS 
These little wanderers spend so much 
of their time so high in the hemlocks or 
other cone hearing trees that we may be 
neighbors to them for many years with- 
O e/ 
out knowing them. 
I went to the foothills one June to meet 
them. Day after day I searched without 
finding them so I began to enquire; hut 
the people were not acquainted with the 
inhabitants of the tree tops. They could 
hardly believe that crossed hills existed. 
ft/ 
One man answered my question by asking 
another: “But, Miss Getty, why is his bill 
7 t/ 7 ft/ 
crossed? Surely it can't be just to dis¬ 
commode him." Another said: “There 
ain't no sech birds!" 
At last I found a woman ay ho had 
really seen them. “O yes/’ she answered, 
“I have a farm farther in among the foot¬ 
hills. They are pugnacious little felloivs. 
My boys used to catch them to see them 
fight.” 
The Crossbills were too high in the 
trees at that season, I could not study 
them. A feiv years after that, late in the 
year, they came farther into the lowlands 
where they fed upon hemlock seeds for 
several months. 
One day, I heard a tiny “Weet, weet." 
They came Ioav enough for me to see their 
