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This year , however, appears to have been rather an exceptional year with regard to Crossbills, as I find some recorded in the 'Zoologist' from Norfolk, the Isle of Wight, Sussex, and Henley-on-Thames, about the same time; therefore there must have been a rather widely-spread flight. From that time I did not hear any more of Crossbills in the Islands till December, 1876, when Mr.
Crests, of birds, difference of, in the sexes; dorsal hairy, of mammals. Cricket, field-, stridulation of the; pugnacity of male. Cricket, house-, stridulation of the. Crickets, sexual differences in. Crinoids, complexity of. Crioceridae, stridulation of the. Croaking of frogs. Crocodiles, musky odour of, during the breeding season. Crocodilia. Crossbills, characters of young. Crosses in man.
None of our song-birds are bullies. Many of our more vigorous species, as the butcherbird, the crossbills, the pine grosbeak, the redpoll, the Bohemian chatterer, the shore lark, the longspur, the snow bunting, etc., are common to both continents. Have the Old World creatures throughout more pluck and hardihood than those that are indigenous to this continent?
Jumper the Hare didn't have time to reply to Peter Rabbit's question when Peter asked if there was any one else besides the Crossbills who had come down from the Far North. "I have," said a voice from a tree just back of them. It was so unexpected that it made both Peter and Jumper hop in startled surprise. Then they turned to see who had spoken.
Olive-backed thrushes, black-poll warblers, crossbills, pine linnets, and Canada jays, all of which I had myself seen in the White Mountains, were none of them here; but instead, to my surprise, were wood thrushes, scarlet tanagers, and wood pewees, the two latter species in comparative abundance.
Still others are seen only in winter, as the brown and shore larks, the crossbills, redpolls, snow-buntings, pine grosbeak, and some of the hawks and owls; and of these some are merely accidental, as the pine grosbeak, which in 1836 appeared here in great numbers in October, and remained until May.
Here was a pretty piece of confusion! I was delighted to see the crossbills, having never before had the first glimpse of them, summer or winter; but what was I to think about the grosbeaks? "Your determination is worthless," said my scientific friend, consolingly; and there was no gainsaying his verdict. Yet by what possibility could I have been so deceived?
Here, again, we have a case of modified and adaptive instinct. All animals are more or less adaptive, and avail themselves of new sources of food supply. When the southern savannas were planted with rice, the bobolinks soon found that this food suited them. A few years ago we had a great visitation in the Hudson River Valley of crossbills from the north.
They found abundance of pine-cones strewn on the ground, but, alas for our little squirrels! very few kernels in them; for the crossbills and chiccadees had been at work for many weeks on the trees; and also many families of their poor relations, the chitmunks or ground squirrels, had not been idle, as our little voyagers could easily guess by the chips and empty cones round their holes.
The tips of the two mandibles are long, curved, and pointed, crossing each other at their ends. This looks like a deformity, but is in reality a splendid cone-opener and seed-extracter. These birds are the crossbills.
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