430 NOTES ON NEW ENGLAND BIRDS 



long, they go off with a fling, to some other cherry tree, 

 which they know of but we do not. The neighborhood 

 of a wild cherry full of fruit is now, for the notes of 

 birds, a little spring come back again, and when, a mile 

 or two from this, I was plucking a basketful of elder- 

 berries (for which it was rather early yet), there too, 

 to my surprise, I came on a flock of golden robins and 

 of bluebirds, apparently feeding on them. Excepting 

 the vacciniums, now past prime and drying up, the 

 cherries and elder-berries are the two prevailing fruits 

 now. We had remarked on the general scarcity and 

 silence of the birds, but when we came to the localities 

 of these fruits, there again we found the berry-eating 

 birds assembled, — young (?) orioles and bluebirds at 

 the elder-berries. 



Nov. 11, 1859. Also, October 24th, riding home from 

 Acton, I saw the withered leaves blown from an oak by 

 the roadside dashing off, gyrating, and surging upward 

 into the air, so exactly like a flock of birds sporting with 

 one another that, for a minute at least, I could not be 

 sure they were not birds ; and it suggested how far the 

 motions of birds, like those of these leaves, might be 

 determined by currents of air, i. e., how far the bird 

 learns to conform to such currents. 



Jan. 5, 1860. How much the snow reveals! I see 

 where the downy woodpecker has worked lately by the 

 chips of bark and rotten wood scattered over the snow, 

 though I rarely see him in the winter. Once to-day, how- 

 ever, I hear his sharp voice, even like a woodchuck's. 

 Also I have occasionally seen where (probably) a flock 

 of goldfinches in the morning ^:ad settled on a hemlock's 



