FAMILY Ampelide. 
ish tint lower down. Female similarly marked. Nest 
built in some tree usually near the house (not infre- 
quently a fruit-tree), bulky, and woven with grasses, 
bark, twigs, moss, and rootlets, sometimes with a basis 
of mud; the lining of similar but finer material. Egg 
purplish or bluish gray variously spotted with umber or 
black. The breeding season is late—about early July. 
The birds range throughout North America, breeding 
from Virginia northward, and among the Alleghany 
Mountains south to South Carolina; they winter from 
the northern United States to northern South America. 
They are characteristic wanderers—Mr. Scott calls them 
gypsies—who come and go in squads of six or seven, or 
more, regardless of migration periods. Their quiet un- 
obtrusiveness, their silence, their gentle manners and re- 
- fined appearance always make them peculiarly attractive 
to the bird-lover, in spite of the fact that they have an 
unfortunate reputation for being over-fond of cherries. 
But I think Mr. F. E. L. Beal has proved that this is an 
onus of unjust opinion saddled upon a bird of generally 
beneficent habits. He says: ‘‘ much complaint has been 
made on account of the fruit eaten. Observation has 
shown, however, that the depredations are confined to 
»rees on which the fruit ripens earliest, while later varie- 
ties are comparatively untouched. Thisis probably owing 
to the fact that when wild fruits ripen they are preferred 
to cherries, and really constitute the bulk of the Cedar- 
bird’s diet. In one hundred and fifty-two stomachs ex- 
amined, animal matter formed only thirteen and vegetable 
eighty-seven per cent., showing that the bird was not 
wholly a fruit eater. . . . Of the eighty-seven per 
cent. of vegetable food, seventy-four consisted entirely 
of wild fruit or seeds, and thirteen of cultivated fruit, 
but a large part of the latter was made up of black- 
berries and raspberries, and it is very doubtful whether 
these represented cultivated varieties. Cherry-stealing 
is the chief complaint against this bird, but of the one 
hundred and fifty-two stomachs only nine, all taken in 
June and July, contained any remains of cultivated 
cherries, and these would aggregate but five per cent. 
of the year’s food.” 
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