246 Brewster on the Pine Grosbeak. IJuly 



snow beneath the tree a Hght brownish tinge. The snow cUng- 

 ing to the twigs and branches was also quickly dislodged by the 

 movements of the active, heavy birds and for the first few minutes 

 it was incessantly flashing out in puffs like steam from a dozen 

 different points at once. The finer particles, sifting slowly down, 

 filled the still air and enveloped the entire tree in a veil-Uke mist 

 of incredible delicacy and beauty, tinted, where the sunbeams 

 pierced it, with rose, salmon, and orange, elsewhere of a soft 

 dead white, — truly a fitting drapery for this winter picture, — 

 the hardy Grosbeaks at their morning meal. They worked in 

 silence when undisturbed and so very busily that at the end of 

 the first hour they had actually eaten or shaken off nearly half 

 the entire crop of seeds. Some men at work near by afterwards 

 told me that this tree was wholly denuded of fruit by three o'clock 

 that afternoon when the birds descended to the ground and 

 attacked the fallen seeds, finishing them before sunset. 



The next day (January 11) the city was fairly in possession 

 of the Grosbeaks. The sound of their piping was constantly in 

 my ears whenever I stepped out of doors, and I rarely looked out 

 of the window for a moment without seeing a fiock sweeping past 

 in long, undulating curves. Mr. Hoffmann writes under this date : 

 " In the afternoon there was a flock of over sixty-five birds in the 

 college yard, feeding in the snow under the ash trees. The birds 

 on the plank walks hardly moved to let the men pass, and one 

 actually lit on my hat as I stood beneath the large ash tree. 

 Numbers were feeding outside the yard between the car-tracks, 

 and on the sidewalks. Many people were watching them." 



Fully a mile from the college, but very near the trees which the 

 birds had stripped on the previous day, stand two large ash trees 

 in which, shortly after eight o'clock, I found over two hundred 

 Grosbeaks feeding. Both trees were thickly hung with seeds at 

 this hour, but the birds had thinned the clusters on the upper 

 branches and were fast working downward. At half-past three 

 that afternoon, when I visited the place again with Mr. Faxon, not 

 a seed remained on either tree. The snow beneath was com- 

 pletely covered with fallen seeds as with a light brown carpet, 

 and the Grosbeaks were all there eating them. By dividing the 

 flocks into halves and counting quickly, we got a very close 



