2^0 Brewster on the Pine Grosbeak. \^^ 



confusion. Sometimes these alarms had no obvious cause. The 

 larger the flocks the oftener they occurred. The great flock 

 at the two ash trees started, on an average, once a minute. 

 Loud, continuous sounds did not seem to excite them, and they 

 were quite as indifferent as the House Sparrows feeding with 

 them, to the near passage of horse cars, sleighs, and the other 

 traffic of the busy street. 



A flock of about a dozen Grosbeaks fed for a day or two in 

 a flowering apple {P. parkmanni) growing in our garden. This 

 tree is only five or six feet high. Its apples, which are scarcely 

 larger than large currants, cling to the twigs all winter and had 

 never been previously eaten by any birds except Waxwings 

 iyAmpelis cedroruni). There had been an unusually large crop 

 in 1892, and the branches of the little tree were literally crowded 

 with the tiny fruit. The Grosbeaks did not eat the pulp, except 

 perhaps incidentally, in small quantities, but crushing the apples 

 they squeezed out the large seeds, of which each fruit usually 

 contains two, and swallowed these. The pulp was dropped, or 

 when, as was frequently the case, it adhered to the bill, shaken 

 off, or removed by rubbing the bill against a twig. As a rule 

 the apple was bitten off a little below the stem so that its 

 basal portion with the long stem remained attached to the tree. 



House-sparrows, who had never before molested the apples, 

 gathered when the Grosbeaks began their raid and watched 

 them. By the end of the first day I saw several Sparrows crush- 

 ing the fruit between their mandibles exactly in the manner of 

 the Grosbeaks, but I think they ate the pulp as well as the seeds. 

 They afterward finished what the Grosbeaks had left. 



I snared several of the Grosbeaks which frequented this tree, 

 using two joints of a light fly rod and a running noose of twine. 

 It was not always an easy task, for the wind blew the noose 

 about, and the birds seldom remained perfectly still for more 

 than a second or two at a time, although they showed not the 

 slightest suspicion or nervousness, allowing the coarse brown 

 twine to rub against their bills and the end of the pole to strike 

 their crowns without, at the most, doing more than to push the 

 noose aside, or to bend their heads to avoid the pole. I actually 

 caught one without alarming the rest of the flock, but usually the 



