on the rigging and deck of the steamer which was about six
hundred miles from the Newfoundland coast. He secured
ten or twelve examples, of which one or two escaped as the
ship neared the Irish coast and made straight for land. Two
others flew out of their cage in the streets of Liverpool, and
five were sent to Mr. Gray, with whom they lived for a few
months. There have probably been many other men who
like Dr. Dewar have helped winged wanderers across the
Atlantic—with what success we may perhaps guess, though
we shall never know, from the American element in our list
of so-called “ British ” birds.*
Except perhaps in Heligoland, where it seems to have
occurred, this Crossbill appears to be otherwise quite unknown
in Europe, and continental writers are not wanting who
deny that it has ever reached this quarter of the globe.
Many years since the elder Reinhardt reported (K. Dansk
Selsk. Naturvid. Afhandl. 1838, p. 92) his receipt of a dried
specimen, apparently an adult male, which had been brought
by an Esquimaux from the east coast of Greenland, and his
son mentions (Ibis, 1861, p. 8) that in later years another
adult male and three young birds, now in the Royal Museum
at Copenhagen, were obtained in South Greenland. To that
desolate country it is of course only a chance straggler, but
in Newfoundland (where, according to Mr. Reeks, it is
known as the Spruce-bird) it is common throughout the
year, being most abundant during winter, when it gathers in
flocks of from five to twenty, and feeds chiefly on the seeds
of the Abies alba, as it does throughout the whole of its
range, which stretches across the breadth of the continent
from Labrador to Alaska. Richardson observed it in lat.
62° N. and thought it probably went as high as the dense
forests of white spruce extend. It is recorded by Mr. Weiz
as breeding at Okkak in Labrador (Proc. Bost. Soc. N.H. x.
p. 267) and by Mr. Boardman as doing the like in winter at
Calais in the State of Maine {op. cit. ix. p. 126). The only
Two white-winged Crossbills shot by Saxby at Halligarth in Unst, Sept. 4th,
1859, would seem from his partial description to have presented American
characteristics. What became of the specimens the Editor does not know.
certain particulars, however, we have of its nidification are
those given by Messrs. Baird, Brewer and Ridgway, in their
‘Birds of North America’, from a nest and egg taken, in
1868, by Dr. A. Adams at Frederickton, in New Brunswick.
The egg is said to be “ pale blue, the large end rather thickly
spattered with fine dots of black and ashy-lilac”, and to
measure ’8 by "56 in. The nest is described as being
“ 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.”
Though some examples winter in the Dominion, the
majority seem to migrate southward as autumn approaches,
and in the Eastern States of the Union to reach Pennsylvania,
where,'rare as their occurrence was in Wilson’s days, they
have since been found more abundantly (Proc. Ac. N. S.
Phil. 1854, p. 208). In spring they mostly return to the
north, and .Audubon in May saw many on the rocky islands
in the Bay of Fundy, and again encountered a flock while
crossing .the Gulf of St. Lawrence, all evidently journeying
northward. This Crossbill was not observed in the United
States to the west of the Mississippi until I860, when it
was found in June by Dr. Hayden on the Wind River
Mountains, and west of the Rocky Mountains it has not
been known to occur south of British Columbia. In behaviour
it is like all the other Crossbills, and its tameness and
pleasing song have been noticed by many ^transatlantic
observers. Its note has been syllabled “ week.”
In all its plumages this bird so closely resembles the preceding
that a general description of them is rendered unnecessary.
By colour alone it would seem almost impossible
to distinguish the young of either sex, and the females of the
one form, from corresponding examples of the other, except
that in the bird of the New World the light edging of the
tail-feathers is seldom visible, while in that of the Old this