706 
BIRDS OF NEW MEXICO 
General Habits. —In the foothills of the Sierra, Mr. Ridgway 
found that the black-faced Lawrence Goldfinch was “common among 
trees by the roadside, and uttered very pleasing and quite peculiar 
notes” (1877, p. 463). 
BENDIRE CROSSBILL: L6xia curvir6stra bendirei Ridgway 
Description. — Male: Length (skins) 5.4-G.3 inches, wing 3.4-3.S, tail 1.8-2.2, 
bill .6-.7, tarsus .6-.7. Female: Length (skins) 5.5-6 inches, wing 3.3-3.6, tail 
1.7-2.1, bill .6-.7, tarsus .6-.7. Tips of bill crossed , tongue horny, concave at end, 
wings long, tail short. Adult male: Dxdl red (varying in shade seasonally), brightest 
on rump, dullest on back and scapulars where the feathers have brownish centers; 
wings and tail blackish without white markings; middle of belly grayish. Adult 
female: Red of male replaced by olive-gray more or less overlaid by yellowish olive, 
brightest on rump. Young in juvenal plumage: Conspicuously streaked with dusky. 
Immature males: A “widely varying mixture of red and green and yellow, never 
exactly alike in any two specimens” (Chapman). 
Range. —Northern and central mountain districts of western United States 
and British Columbia, from the Cascades and Sierra Nevada to the Rocky Moun¬ 
tains in Colorado and New Mexico; during migration east to eastern Nebraska 
and Kansas, and west to the coast district of California; casually to northern Lower 
California. 
State Records. —At 11,000 feet in the Upper Pecos region during the last of 
July, 1903, small flocks of Crossbills were very common, and at 11,600 feet at the 
foot of Pecos Baldy they were occasionally heard flying over. At 8,000 feet on 
the Pecos they were seen on August 21, and later were heard passing over Coyote 
Creek and Moreno Valley. They were also heard on both slopes of the Taos Moun¬ 
tains (Bailey). 
Four specimens wore collected from those seen in the Pecos* Mountains, and 
they resemble more closely the form that breeds in the mountains of Colorado than 
the Arizona breeding bird. There is, of course, no surety that these birds had nested 
in New Mexico; indeed the probability is that they were migrants from Colorado. 
Crossbills presumably of this same form were seen once near Willis in the fall of 
1883 (Henshaw), and a flock December 20, 1882, near Las Vegas (Batchelder). 
In the higher parts of the Guadalupe Mountains birds of undetermined subspecies 
were noted twice in January, 1915 (Willett). At Aragon, in the Tularosa Range, 
migration was well under way by September 15 and continuing October 7, 1915 
(Ligon).—W. W. Cooke. 
Nest. —In coniferous trees, rather flat, made externally of conifer twigs, shreds 
of soft bark or tree moss, and grass stems; lined with fine rootlets and sometimes 
horsehair. Eggs: Usually 4, pale greenish or bluish green, lightly flecked with 
lavender and with a wreath of lavender and brown spots around the larger end. 
Food. —Chiefly seeds of conifers. 
General Habits. —At our 11,000-foot camp in the Pecos Moun¬ 
tains small flocks of the parti-colored Crossbills, calling kimp , kimp , 
as they came, lit in the tops of the spruces, leaning over to pick out the 
seeds from the cones with their sharply pointed crossed bills, especially 
adapted to their work. At such times, Doctor Cooper noted, “the 
color of the males so closely resembles that of the young spruce cones 
that it is hard to distinguish them on a tree” (1860, p. 198). 
