cross bill

Over the fireplace someone had set the crossed bills of dead threns.

In the car park we eyed the puddles in the tarmac where parrot cross bills sometimes drink after a meal of sticky pine seeds.

PCB's and dioxin-like compounds have caused embryo deaths and chick deformities like crossed bills and club feet in double-crested cormorants, Caspian terns and other fish-eating birds that nest in Great Lakes colonies.

Richardson's predecessor Samuel Ball Platner maintained the integrity of the phrase and conjectured that the Ciconiae Nixae was "a certain district of the city, probably an open square, in which there was a statue, or perhaps a relief on one of the surrounding buildings, of two or more storks with crossed bills."