482 NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS. 



Ill severe winters Mr. Audubon has met with the Pine Finch as far south 

 as Henderson, Ky., and Charleston, S. C, but such visits were always brief. 

 In August, 1832, he met with flocks of these birds in Labrador. They were 

 in company with the Crossbill, and were feeding on the seeds of the fir-trees, 

 and also on tliose of the thistle. When at the Magdalen Islands he frequently 

 saw flocks moving from various directions. At Bras d'Or, towards the end of 

 July, they were in great numbers, and the old birds were accompanied by 

 their young. They frequented thickets of willows and elders in the vicinity 

 of water, and were very fearless and gentle. According to his account they 

 sing while on the wing, and their notes are sweet, varied, clear, and mellow, 

 and, while somewhat resembling the song of the C. tristis, are perfectly dis- 

 tinct from it. Its flight is exactly similar, both gliding through the air in 

 graceful and deep curves. 



In Washington Territory Dr. Cooper found this Finch an abundant and 

 constant resident, migrating to the coast in winter, where it feeds on tlie seeds 

 of the alder. In summer they were gregarious, even when occupied with 

 their nests and young. He has never met with any in California, not even 

 in the Sierra Nevada, though they have been found by others along its 

 whole western slope, as far south as Fort Tejon. They feed on the seeds 

 of both coniferous and deciduous trees. 



Early in May, 1859, a pair of these birds built their nest in the garden of 

 Professor Benjamin Peirce, in Cambridge, Mass., near the colleges. It was 

 found on the 9th by Mr. Frederick Ware, and already contained its full 

 complement of four eggs, partly incubated. This nest was three inches 

 in height and four in diameter. The depth of the cavity, as well as its 

 diameter at the rim, was two inches. The base of this nest was a mass 

 of loose materials, and the lower portions of the sides were hardly differ- 

 ent. The upper and the inner portions of this faliric were much more com- 

 pactly and neatly woven, or rather felted together. The outer layers con- 

 sisted of small twigs of the Thuja, dried stems and ends of pine twigs, 

 grasses, sedges, stalks of small vegetables, fine roots, bits of wool, and coarse 

 hair. The whole was very closely lined with fine dry roots of herbaceous 

 plants and the hair of small quadrupeds. 



The eggs are of an oblong-oval shape, of a light green ground-color, spotted, 

 chiefly at the larger end, with markings of a light rusty-brown. They meas- 

 ure .71 by .50 of an inch. They have a marked resemblance to the eggs of 

 the Linarim, but the ground-color is of a slightly lighter shade. 



A nest of this species, found May 15, 1868, at Brunich, Canada, was com- 

 posed almost entirely of pine twigs interlaced in a very neat and artistic 

 manner. Its diameter was three and a half inches, and its height two inches. 

 It was lined with hair. The cavity was one and a half inches deep and two 

 inches wide. 



