96 BULLETIN 19 7, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



The flights are perhaps taken for exercise in which the young birds 

 join, and they may serve as a preparation for a long migration later 

 in the season. 



Winter. — Cedarbirds appear to us at their best advantage when 

 they arrive in New England in the late winter months or early in 

 spring and gather in large flocks in the trees where there is a bountiful 

 food supply. The "cedar pastures," to use an old New England term, 

 furnish one of their favorite foods, and the cultivated rowan trees, 

 the European mountain-ash, laden with red berries, supply another. 

 One of these trees, which stood for years in my front yard in Lexing- 

 ton, Mass., was a rendezvous of the cedarbirds almost every winter 

 and spring. Long before my time the tree had been famous for its 

 cedarbirds, which by their numbers and tameness often attracted 

 the attention of merely casual passersby. From my windows I could 

 study the birds at short range for hours at a time, and the following 

 glimpses of them, adapted and condensed from the records in my 

 journal written with the birds only a few yards away, show their 

 behavior at this season of the year. 



A company of the birds often drops into the tree from high in the 

 air, way above the surrounding elms, coming down almost perpendicu- 

 larly with wings closed until just before they come to rest in the ash 

 tree. They begin at once to pick off the berries. They seem in a 

 hurry, as if ravenously hungry, and eager to get at the food. They 

 lean downward to reach the berries hanging in a cluster below them, 

 snatch one, and, pulling it free, straighten up, and, with the bill 

 almost vertical, manipulate the berry until they get a good hold on it. 

 Sometimes in throwing the head back, they give the berry a little 

 toss and catch it again ; sometimes, but very rarely, they drop a berry 

 in this way. When feeding they almost always remain near to- 

 gether, often side by side, not scattered widely in the tree, but they 

 are restless and move constantly from one branch to another. 



They eat their fill, then fly up to the branches of an overhanging 

 elm where they remain quiet for many minutes. In spite of the 

 strong wind they appear not to seek shelter from it but between their 

 visits to the ash tree sit in little groups, often in rows, high on the 

 exposed elm branches, facing the blustering, biting wind, riding the 

 swaying branches. When perched thus they squat down close to 

 their perch and lean forward so that their backs are almost parallel 

 to the ground, their heads drawn backward and downward close to 

 the body between the shoulders. Sometimes they drop to the ground 

 and drink from a puddle of melted snow, then fly back to the ash tree, 

 pulling off the fruit again and tossing the berries about before swal- 

 lowing them. There is a constant restlessness in the flock. There may 

 be 75 or more birds in the tree, all busily feeding, and five minutes 

 later not a bird is in sight. Sometimes as many as half the flock, 30 or 



