138 LAND-BIRDS AND GAME-BIRDS 
(b). The nest is rather bulky, and is composed of fine 
grasses, weeds, roots, fibres, leaves, strips of bark, etc., being 
sometimes lined with finer grasses or hairs. It is usually placed 
in an orchard-tree or in a cedar, but sometimes in other situa- 
tions—such as the tops of birches or pasture-trees, commonly 
from eight to twenty feet above the ground. Four or five eggs 
are laid in the latter part of June or in July. They average 
about :80 X ‘60 of an inch; and are of a dirty bluish-white, 
with black and a few dark purplish spots. 
(c). The Cedar-birds, to a certain extent, spend the winters 
in Eastern Massachusetts, but otherwise arrive from the South 
in the first or second week of March. They are found, in 
summer, throughout New England, and are in most places 
common during that season. Through winter they remain in 
flocks — usually in retired parts of the country —and feed upon 
berries until spring, when they venture into more open districts. 
At this time their demeanor is not such as to inspire cheerful- 
ness to the person observing them, for they usually sit motion- 
less upon the tops of bare trees, and there occasionally give 
utterance to their dreary whispers, until they fly away. They 
move through the air rapidly, steadily, and as if under military 
discipline, so unbroken are their ranks. They commonly dis- 
appear, like several other birds, at uncertain times of the year, 
and undoubtedly go to some place where their favorite food is 
abundant during the time that they are absent from one’s own 
neighborhood. In May they usually become common, and ap- 
pear in smaller companies in almost all parts of the open 
country. These flocks finally become divided into pairs, who 
build their nests when nearly all our other birds have hatched 
the eggs of their first or even second broods. The Cherry- 
birds, in summer, sometimes imitate the habits of the fly- 
catchers (to whom they are, perhaps, more closely allied than 
is now admitted), and I have seen them perform graceful evo- 
lutions in the air, in the manner of the King-birds. As their 
name indicates, they sometimes eat cherries, but much less 
often than is commonly supposed by certain farmers, who are 
but too ready to discharge their guns at these birds, in spite 
of their usefulness in destroying caterpillars. 
