In the spring of 1869, Mr. Jillson, of Hudson, Mass., sent me a pair of these birds which he had captured the preceding autumn. They were very tame, and were exceedingly interesting little pets. Their movements in the cage were like those of caged parrots in every respect, except that they were far more easy and rapid. They clung to the sides and upper wires of the cage with their feet, hung down from them, and seemed to enjoy the practice of walking with their head downward. They were in full song, and both the male and the female were quite good singers. Their songs were irregular and varied, but sweet and musical. They ate almost every kind of food, but were especially eager for slices of raw apples. An occasional larch cone was also a great treat to them. Although while they lived they were continually bickering over their food, yet when the female was accidentally choked by a bit of eggshell her mate was inconsolable, ceased to sing, refused his food, and died of grief in a very few days.
The White-winged Crossbill was seen more frequently by Mr. Ridgway among the East Humboldt Mountains than the other species. It was first noticed on the 12th of August among the cedars on the mountains. Its fine plaintive cry of “wēēk” was entirely different from the hurriedly uttered notes of the C. americana.
Several specimens of this Crossbill have been taken in Europe, where their occurrence is of course accidental, irregular, and rare.
A nest of this species (S. I., 13,452), taken at Fredericton, New Brunswick, by Dr. A. Adams, in 1868, is deeply saucer-shaped, and composed of a rather thin wall of fibrous pale-green lichens, encased on the outside with spruce
twigs, and thinly lined with coarse hairs and fine shreds of inner bark. Its external diameter is a little less than four inches, the rim being almost perfectly circular; the cavity is an inch and a half deep by two and a half broad.
The one egg is pale blue, the large end rather thickly spattered with fine dots of black and ashy-lilac; is regularly or rather slightly elongate-oval, the small end rather obtuse. It measures .80 of an inch in length by .56 in breadth.
Genus ÆGIOTHUS, Caban.
Acanthis, Bonap. Conspectus, 1850, not of Bechstein, 1802, nor of Keys. & Blas. 1840.
Ægiothus, Cabanis, Mus. Hein. 1851, 161. (Type, Fringilla linaria, Linn.)—Coues, Pr. Acad. Nat. Sc. Phil. 1861, 373; 1863, 40; 1869, 180.
