396 MEMOIRS OF THE NUTTALL ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 



three years, and since 1900 they have been even more numerous than they were 

 before the disaster above mentioned. As a result of this numerical rebound 

 certain of the birds, crowded out of haunts to which the species has been con- 

 fined during the past quarter of a century, have been forced to take up their 

 abode in various unaccustomed places. At Concord they have begun to breed 

 rather commonly in dense oak woods, and in the Cambridge Region to re-invade 

 some of the territory from which they were driven by the House Sparrows 

 twenty years or more ago. Since 190 1 a pair have reared young every season 

 in an apple orchard bordering on Huron Avenue, Cambridge, and Mr. J. D. 

 Sornborger is very sure that another pair nested near the Museum of Compara- 

 tive Zoology in 1903. In 1905 Bluebirds bred in the immediate neighborhood 

 of our own place for the first time in over twenty years. One pair took posses- 

 sion of a box fastened to the side of a summer-house in grounds at the corner 

 of Sparks and Highland Streets, belonging to Mr. J. A. Noyes, while another 

 made use of a deserted Woodpecker's hole in a poplar stub at the rear of Mr. 

 E. L. Beard's house on Brattle Street. Both pairs brought out their broods in 

 safety. 



In early spring, during or immediately after heavy snow-falls. Bluebirds 

 sometimes resort to groves of red cedars, on the berries of which they feed 

 greedily until the ground becomes bare again. At such times I have found as 

 many as twenty or thirty collected in one place among the cedars to the west- 

 ward of Mount Auburn or in those near Arlington Heights and Belmont. In 

 autumn the birds are almost invariably met with in flocks, usually in fields or 

 pastures sprinkled with large oak or apple trees, or along country roadsides 

 bordered by scattered trees. 



Although I cannot learn that the Bluebird has ever been found in the 

 Cambridge Region in midwinter, it has been known to occur at that season 

 no further away than Wellesley; and at Melrose Highlands, according to Mr. 

 Bradford Torrey (Auk, VIII, 1891, 239-240), one was seen at frec|uent intervals 

 between December 9 and February 5 in the winter of 1 890-1 891. 



