Head ovate, of ordinary size; neck short; body full. Feet rather short; tarsus short, rather stout, compressed, with six anterior scutella, and two plates behind, meeting so as to form an edge, except at the lower part; toes of moderate size, first stout, third and fourth slightly connected at the base; inner toe a little shorter than outer; third much longer. Claws rather long, arched, much compressed, acute.
Plumage blended, very soft, silky, but with little gloss. A tuft of linear, oblong, erectile, decurved feathers on the head; no bristles at the base of the bill. Wings rather long, broad, and pointed; first quill longest, the second slightly shorter, the other primaries pretty equally graduated; secondaries, excepting the inner two, broad and abruptly rounded, with the shaft projecting and enlarged into a flat, oblong, horny appendage, of the colour of red sealing-wax. Tail of moderate length, even, or very slightly emarginate, the middle feathers being shorter, by a twelfth of an inch, than the one next the lateral.
Bill black, the base of the lower mandible whitish. Iris hazel. Feet and claws black. The general colour of both surfaces is ash-grey, becoming more tinged anteriorly with brownish-orange, of which colour are the forehead, a patch on each side of the throat near the base of the bill, and the feathers under the tail. A band of deep black from the nasal membrane, along the lore, and over the eye, to the top of the head, where it is concealed by the crest; feathers at the base of the lower mandible, and a narrow streak below the eye white; the upper part of the throat deep black. Alula, primary coverts, and quills greyish-black, the secondaries more grey; the primary coverts largely tipped with white, the primary quills with a bright yellow, the secondary with a white elongated spot at the end of the outer web. Tail light grey at the base, gradually shaded into deep black, with a broad terminal band of bright yellow.
Length to end of tail 9 3/4 inches; extent of wings 16 1/4; wing from flexure 4 8/12; tail 3; bill along the ridge 6/12, along the edge of lower mandible 9/12; tarsus 9 1/2/12; hind toe 4/12, its claw 4/12; middle toe 7 1/2/12, its claw 3 1/2/12.
Female. Plate CCCLXIII. Fig. 2.
The Female is similar to the male, but somewhat smaller.
The wax-like appendages vary from seven, which is the greatest number, to four or three, and are sometimes wanting, especially in young birds, of which, however, some possess them. In some specimens the yellow tips of the tail-feathers and primary quills are very pale yellow or whitish.
WHITE-WINGED CROSSBILL.
Loxia Leucoptera, Gmel.
PLATE CCCLXIV. Male, Female, and Young.
I found this species quite common on the islands near the entrance of the Bay of Fundy, which I visited early in May 1833. They were then journeying northwards, although many pass the whole year in the northern parts of the State of Maine, and the British provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, where, however, they seem to have been overlooked, or confounded with our Common American Crossbill. Those which I met with on the islands mentioned above were observed on their margins, some having alighted on the bare rocks, and all those which were alarmed immediately took to wing, rose to a moderate height, and flew directly eastward. On my passage across the Gulf of St Laurence to Labrador, in the same month, about a dozen White-winged Crossbills, and as many Mealy Redpolls, one day alighted on the top-yards of the Ripley; but before we could bring our guns from below, they all left us, and flew ahead of the vessel, as if intent on pointing out to us the place to which we were bound. On the 30th of June, a beautiful male was shot, on a bunch of grass growing out of the fissure of a rock, on a small island a few miles from the coast of Labrador; and on the 23d of July, my young friend Dr George Shattuck, procured a fine adult female on the Murre Islands, whilst she was feeding among the scanty herbage.