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Nov., ?9o51 THE AMERICAN CROSSBILL IN MONTANA x75 to another, and given several times in nervous repetition. This note is also heard when the birds are at rest in the tree-tops, or when diligently rending the seeds from the fir and tamarack cones. The male uses this note as the basis of his song, which can be suggested by the syllables: "Quit, quit, quit, quit,--preen, preen, preen." Sometimes the last note is given four times, and frequently as many as five, while at times there is variation in the number of repetitions of the opening note. There is also considerable variation in the enunciation of the two notes, making them sound quite differently on various occasions. Once this summer I quoted the first note or the regular call as "pweet," and wrote the full song as "preet, preet, preet,--ooree, ooree, ooree." The nuptial singing of the male is gellerally heard when he is accompanying the female and stationed near her in the tree-top. Frequently there are more than two birds, probably one female and two or more nlales, or two adults and several young of the spring. Troops of five or six are most commonly seen, the male sitting quietly and singing his nervous song while the.others aresending down spatterings of c(me-seeds. Soon so.mething will startle the troop, and away they whir to another station, the adults chirping noisily as they fly. It is most interesting to watch a troop of crossbills getting down to the water to driuk and bathe. For such purpose they generally congregate in larger flocks, and I have seen as many as thirty or forty use one tree-top. They seem to prefer the middle of the forenoon ()r late afternoon. Most of the crossbills in a small locality will collect into a noisy band, and gather in the top of some chosen tree on the margin of the water. Then one by one they will flutter downward through the midst of the branches, reminding the observer of falling leaves. Thus they sift downward to the lowest branches of the tree, usually a tall one, sometimes sev- eral of the birds flitting downward at one time. From the lower branches of the tree they flutter to the edge of the water. The crossbills take pleasure ill congregating on a small area to feed near a cabin door in a forest clearing. I have seen thirty crowding on a space not more than two feet square, feeding on refuse from the kitchen. Once a cat crept up ill the nsual feline manner, and made a spring directly into the midst of the troop; that occasion, however, though several of the birds seenled to be quite uuder her paws, the cat was unsuccessful in holding any of them, and in a few minutes they were flitting back to the same daugerous place. The remarkable activity of the crossbill in the late summer seenled very usual to me, and I felt quite certain that the birds were nesting ill the neighbor- hood. [ had read, however, that tile regular nesting time is late winter, when snow is on the ground; and xvhile I made a mental note that there must be a mis- take somewhere, I did not then give the subject due attention. This seasou, how- ever, the same condition of affairs prevailed in the economy of the crossbills, and I decided that the nuptial slinging of the males must be explained. On July t9 a pair of crossbills flitted down to the ground almost at my feet, quite overlooking my presence, the illale chattering to his spouse. To my sur- prise she began picking tip fragments of twigs in the edge of the clearing. Present- ly she flew away with a suitable twig, and carried it into the top of a tall tama- rack in the outer part of the adjacent woods. I watched her while she made sev- eral similar errands. The site was near the extremity of a horizontal branch, about xoo feet from the ground. Frequently she made trips to a neighboring tam- arack tree, and gathered pieces of small twigs, breaklug them from their places and carrying them to the nest. The next day the pair did not seem to be worklug on the nest. The male