BIRD BIOGRAPHIES 



northern Arkansas, and North Carolina; winters ir- 

 regularly throughout nearly all the United States, 

 and south to Cuba, Mexico, and Panama. 



CEDAR WAXWINGS are among our most exquisite 

 birds in their delicate blending of color and in 

 their dainty refinement. They seem to have been tinted 

 by a water-color artist, or an expert in the use of pastels. 

 Their proverbial good manners seem to preclude any dis- 

 turbance of their well-preened feathers by undue haste of 

 movement or quarrelsome ruffling. 



My earliest recollections of diese beautiful but rather 

 uninteresting birds is of their frequent raids upon a great 

 mulberry tree in my grandparents' garden. They gorged 

 upon the dead-ripe mulberries with the quiet enjoyment of 

 epicures rather than the greedy haste of gourmands. I 

 remember, also, my grandmother's dismay at the inroads 

 which the "cherry-birds" and robins made upon her cherry 

 crop, and my bird-loving grandfather's command that no 

 bird should be molested. 



Cedar, juniper, sumac, and mountain ash berries, form 

 the winter diet of these frugivorous birds. As a larder 

 is speedily exhausted by a flock of from twenty to sixty 

 hungry fruit-eaters, they must fly to "pastures new." 

 During the spring and summer seasons, diey supplement 

 their diet of wild fruit, most of which is of no commer- 

 cial value, with beetles that infest potato-patches and elm 

 trees, and cankerworms that prey upon apple trees. They 

 are very valuable to man, and earn their dessert of culti- 

 vated cherries. Mr. Forbush says that they deserve the 

 name of "cankerworm birds." 



He writes as follows: "They frequent infested or- 



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