The above description applies in all particulars to the female, only the two middle tail-feathers were spotted like the rest.
Length 2 feet, extent of wings 4; bill 1 4⁄12 along the ridge; tarsus 2.
It is remarkable that the female, although the heaviest and apparently the strongest bird of the pair, has the alar extent less by an inch than that of the male, which she exceeds in length by 1½ inches.
THE COMMON CROSSBILL.
Loxia Curvirostra, Linn.
PLATE CXCVII. Male, Female, and Young.
This species I have found more abundant in Maine, and in the British provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, than any where else. Although I have met with it as early as the month of August in the Great Pine Forest of Pennsylvania, I have never seen its nest. Many persons in the State of Maine assured me that they had found it on pine-trees in the middle of winter, and while the earth was deeply covered with snow. The people employed in cutting pine timber at that season, when it is easier to remove the logs to the rivers, in which they are subsequently floated when the ice melts, have very frequently told me, that on felling a tree they have caught the young Crossbills, which had been jerked out of their nest. Several of my acquaintances in that district promised to send me nests, eggs, and young; but as yet, I am sorry to say, none of them have reached me. While at Labrador I was much disappointed at not finding a single bird of this species, although the White-winged Crossbill was tolerably abundant there; and in Newfoundland matters were precisely the same.
The Crossbill lives in flocks, composed apparently of several families, and is an extremely gentle and social bird. They are easily approached, caught in traps, or even killed with a stick. So unsuspicious are they with respect to man, that they not unfrequently come up to the very door of the woodman's cabin, and pick the mud with which he has plastered the spaces between the logs of which it is composed. When the huts are raised on blocks, to prevent dampness, they are often seen under them, picking up the earth for want of better food, while the weather is at its coldest.
Their food consists principally of the seeds contained in the cones of different species of the pine and fir. In the pine forests of Pennsylvania I saw them feeding on those of the white pine, the hemlock, and the spruce, as well as on various kinds of fruits. Wherever an apple-tree bore fruit, the Crossbills were sure to be on it, cutting the apples to pieces in order to get at the seeds, in the manner of our Parakeet of the south. Nothing can exceed the dexterity with which they extricate the seeds from the cones with their bill, the point of the upper mandible of which they employ as a hook, placing it at the base of the seed, and drawing it up with a sudden jerk of the head. They frequently stand on one foot only, and employ the other in conveying the food to their bill, in the manner of parrots. They are fond of all saline matter.
The flight of this species is undulating, firm, tolerably swift, and capable of being protracted over a large space. While travelling they pass in the air in straggling flocks, and keep up a constant noise, each individual now and then emitting a clear note or call. They move with ease on the ground, alight sidewise on the walls of houses and on trees, on the twigs of which they climb with the aid of their bill. When caged they soon become tame, and are fed without any difficulty.
I have presented you with a flock of these Crossbills, composed of individuals of different ages, engaged in their usual occupations, on a branch of their favourite tree, the hemlock pine.