Loxia minor. Lake Umbagog, Maine. 1895. About the cellar where the Umbagog House formerly stood Aug. 30. were a dozen or more Red Crossbills which were accompanied by a pair of White-winged Crossbills and a single Pine Linnet. They clustered thickly together on a space of bare ground where they seemed to be scooping up the earth with their bills and swallowing it in large mouthfuls. Standing within a few yards of them and using my glass I became satisfied that it was actually the earth which they were eating. Probably salt had been strewn there. All the Crossbills, as I convinced myself by a close and systematic inspection of each member of the flock in turn, were old birds and the males were in full red plumage. When , as happened every few minutes-for they were very restless and unusually shy for Crossbills,-the flock took alarm at some real or imaginary danger and flew up into the scorched and leafless paper birches which used to shade the Umbagog House, but which are now all nearly or quite dead. The Red Crossbills would begin singing and keep it up with brief intermissions for several minutes, sometimes only one singing at a time but usually two or three mingling their voices in a medley like Goldfinches in early spring. This song was new to me. It began with three or four full, sweet notes very much like that of the Goldfinch and ended with an equal number of comparatively harsh yet by no means unpleasing notes