114. BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 
of tenderness, and are often seen kissing each 
other. Gumpei Kuwada, the young Japanese ob- 
server at Northampton, Massachusetts, has sent 
me some interesting notes on the subject. He 
says: “On the 7th of May I saw a very large 
flock of cedar-birds, Ampelis cedrorum. Two of 
these were seated on a branch a little distance 
apart, and one hopped toward the other and bent 
down his head and touched the bill of the other 
with his own bill, then went back to his place ; 
then the second bird went to the first bird and 
went through the same motions and returned to 
his place; then the first bird repeated the per- 
formance, and so these two cedar-birds went alter- 
nately and touched each other’s bills for about 
five minutes. The action of the two birds was so 
funny that I could not call it anything else but 
that they fell in love and kissed each other. It 
could not possibly have been a mother feeding 
her young, because it was so early in the season, 
and they were in a flock and had nothing in their 
bills, and their bills were shut.” 
The cedar-birds are not only affectionate in 
their own families, but sometimes show the most 
human compassion to stranger birds. Mrs. 
Martha D. Jones, of Northampton, writes me of 
a touching instance of their friendliness. She 
says: “ Last summer my sister watched for weeks 
a robin’s nest in an apple-tree some ten feet from 
her chamber window. She could see into the nest, 
