CHAPTER V 



THE CEDAR-BIRD 



ON the twenty-seventh of May, I saw a small company of 

 birds settling in the topmost branches of an elm. You 

 might infer from their behavior that they were new arrivals. 

 They keep together, sit prim and erect, and move about as if 

 under discipline. With a glass you can see their erected crests, 

 their sleek drab plumage, and recognize at once the familiar 

 Cedar- or Cherry -bird. 



At Northfield, New Hampshire, the earliest nests have eggs 

 by the first or second week in June, but the breeding season is 

 not at its height until the last of July or August. A few still 

 have young in the nest in early September, when many are nock- 

 ing or have already started southward. Professor Baird speaks 

 of finding these birds sitting on their unhatched eggs as late as 

 the twelfth day of October. 



The winter flocks of Cedar Waxwings, which are occasionally 

 seen in northern New England, are probably migrants whose 

 summer home is farther north. 



The Cedar-birds borrow no trouble from their neighbors, and 

 seem to lead a life of ease and pleasure, lessening their denomi- 

 nator when the times are hard, but living high when cherries 

 are ripe. The nesting season, which brings much that is sweet 

 and bitter to the lives of most birds, appears to give them the 

 least anxiety. The immaturity of their eggs at a time when 

 most of our birds have already reared their first broods is a 

 striking fact, and is due to some unknown cause which retards 

 the growth of the ovaries. It is evidently not caused by a lack 

 of suitable food as some have supposed for the seed-eating 



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