Purple Finches are often seen among the budding branches of a fruit tree, balancing on the slender twigs as they eat buds and capture occasional insects. The females are virtually silent, until they have cause to depart, then they swing off into the air, bound merrily higher and higher above the tree-tops, and make off as they call tik, tik in a characteristic tone. This important call-note should be remembered; it often serves to identify the species when the colors cannot be seen.
In its nesting-range, the song of this Finch is to be heard during all the spring and early summer days. At Pymatuning Swamp, restless males sang almost constantly while their mates assembled nesting materials. An ecstatic flight-song is frequently given when the bright male flutters high into the air and, still singing, descends on trembling wings to the twigs and new leaves.
The Purple Finch’s habit of eating buds and flowers of trees, including valuable orchard varieties, causes it to be unpopular when it is too common.
RED OR AMERICAN CROSSBILL
Loxia curvirostra pusilla Gloger
Description.—Size and general shape of English Sparrow, but mandibles sharply pointed and crossed. Adult male: Deep dull red, brightest on rump, browner on back; wings and tail brownish black. Female: Dull olive-green, yellowish on the rump; head and back indistinctly streaked with blackish; underparts mixed with whitish. Immature male: Like the female, with some red mixed in the plumage. Length: 6 inches.
WHITE-WINGED CROSSBILL
Loxia leucoptera Gmelin
Description.—Size and shape of English Sparrow. Male: Dull rose-pink, brightest on rump, more or less streaked with blackish on back; wings and tail black, the wings with two prominent white bars, the tertials sometimes tipped with white; belly and under tail-coverts whitish. Female: Dull grayish green, yellowish on the rump, grayish below, the wings, as in the male, with two prominent white bars. Immature male: Similar to the female, but mottled irregularly with pink. Length: 6 inches.
Range in Pennsylvania.—Both Crossbills are irregular winter visitors, sometimes abundant. They are usually found among coniferous trees. The Red Crossbill nests rarely in our higher mountains among the coniferous trees.
These two species are nearly always to be found together during winter, and in any plumage may be recognized by their wings, those of the White-winged species always having two wing-bars, those of the Red Crossbill never being marked. The Crossbills feed upon seeds of hemlock, pine, and spruce, which they secure by wrenching off the scales of the cones with their sharply pointed and crossed beaks.
Red Crossbill
White-winged Crossbill