_Loxia curvirostra minor. Case 2 Figs. 49, 50_
Crossbills have the mandibles crossed; the absence
of wing-bars distinguishes this species from the
usually less common White-winged Crossbill. L.
6-1/4.
_Range._ Nests from northern New England to Canada
and southward in the Alleghanies to northern
Georgia. Winters irregularly southward, rarely as
far as Florida and Louisiana.
Washington, irregular W.V., sometimes abundant.
Ossining, irregular; noted in almost every month.
Cambridge, of common but irregular occurrence at
all seasons. N. Ohio, irregular, often common,
sometimes breeds. Glen Ellyn, uncommon and
irregular, Oct. 20-June 11. SE. Minn., W.V., Oct.
25.
Crossbills and Grosbeaks are among winter's chief attractions. While the
latter, as I have said above, will leave their summer homes in
coniferous forests to feed in winter on the seeds of deciduous trees,
the Crossbills are less adaptable. They are specialists in
cone-dissecting. Their singularly shaped bills prevent them from eating
many kinds of food available to other birds, but no other birds can
compete with them in extracting the seeds from cones. Having had too
limited an experience with man to have learned to fear him, they are so
surprisingly tame that I have known birds to be plucked from trees as
one would pick off the cones on which they were feeding. In March, while
the ground is still snow-covered, they lay 3-4 pale greenish, spotted
eggs in a well-formed nest, 15-30 feet up in a coniferous tree.