210 NEWS FHOM THE BIRDS. 



for them. Sometimes a dozen of them could 

 be heard whistling their gay love songs at the 

 same time. The little Kentucky warbler sang 

 in much the same strain, only with less vigor 

 and variety. 



The grossbeaks were plentiful in the South 

 during my visit there in the spring of 1894. 

 True, there were no bushy hillsides in that re- 

 gion, but in the quivering swamps, covered with 

 thickly matted bushes, these birds held their 

 song carnivals, and flitted about amid the foli- 

 age like living studies in red. It may have 

 been mere fancy, but it seemed to me that I 

 never saw cardinals so brilliant of plumage as 

 were the cardinals of the Louisiana swamps. 



The spring of 1897 found me pursuing my 

 busy avocation in southern Mississippi, ram- 

 bling along the Gulf coast intent on the study 

 of avian folk. On the 27th of April a cardi- 

 nal's nest containing three callow bantlings was 

 found, and the next day another with three 

 eggs. These nests were carefully concealed in 

 the densest part of a green copse. Thus it will 

 be seen that the cardinals breed in the South 

 as well as in the North. It would be interest- 

 ing to know whether a pair ever raise a family 

 on the Gulf coast in the early spring, and then 

 find some more northern summer home in which 



