58 MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN. 



AMERICAN GOLDFINCH. Astragolinus tristis. 



In late summer and early autumn, when some of the sum- 

 mer sojourners have left their breeding grounds and the re- 

 maining ones are all more or less elusive, the Goldfinch plays 

 a prominent part in the bird Hfe of the Garden. Goldfinches 

 are notoriously late breeders, and it is only about the middle 

 of August that their three or four young ones are ready to 

 accompany their parents to the inviting beds of seed-bearing 

 composites, so plentiful in the Garden. Two families, reared 

 on the premises, had their headquarters in the arboretum and 

 Synopsis throughout September and October and felt so much 

 at home that they paid little attention to visitors, keeping 

 unconcernedly at their task of removing akenes from recep- 

 tacles within a few feet of the observer. They even invited 

 attention by uttering their pleasing canary-like notes when- 

 ever they ahghted or changed their perch. Being very fond 

 of running water for drinking and bathing they were often 

 met with at the little brook in the Synopsis. When after the 

 first frost in October the flower beds, which had supplied their 

 favorite food, were cleared, they joined the flocks of ground 

 feeding Juncos and other members of the sparrow family and 

 disappeared with them at the end of the month. Long before 

 their departure the males had changed their handsome black- 

 trimmed yellow livery for a plain brownish traveling suit, not 

 much different from that of the female and young. Roving 

 troops of Goldfinches may visit the Garden temporarily dur- 

 ing the winter and flocks of north-bound wanderers will stop 

 over in April and early in May, but it will be June before pairs 

 leave their comrades and begin to look around for a nesting 

 site. 



HOUSE SPARROW. PasscT domesticus. 



The House Sparrow is a wonderful bird. Less than two 

 thousand individuals introduced from Europe between 1851 

 and 1881 have increased to many miUions, which have over- 

 spread the whole United States from one end to the other. 

 Wherever there are occupied human habitations there is the 



