138 LAND-BIRDS AND GAME-BIRDS 



(6). The nest is rather bulky, and is composed of fine 

 grasses, weeds, roots, fibres, leaves, strips of bark, etc., being 

 sometimes lined with finer grasses or hairs. It is usually placed 

 in an orchard-tree or in a cedar, but sometimes in other situa- 

 tions such as the tops of birches or pasture-trees, commonly 

 from eight to twenty feet above the ground. Four or five eggs 

 are laid in the latter part of June or in July. They average 

 about -80 X '60 of an inch ; and are of a dirty bluish-white, 

 with black and a few dark purplish spots. 



(c). The Cedar-birds, to a certain extent, spend the winters 

 in Eastern Massachusetts, but otherwise arrive from the South 

 in the first or second week of March. They are found, in 

 summer, throughout New England, and are in most places 

 common during that season. Through winter they remain in 

 flocks usually in retired parts of the country and feed upon 

 berries until spring, when they venture into more open districts. 

 At this time their demeanor is not such as to inspire cheerful- 

 ness to the person observing them, for they usually sit motion- 

 less upon the tops of bare trees, and there occasionally give 

 utterance to their dreary whispers, until they fly away. They 

 move through the air rapidly, steadily, and as if under military 

 discipline, so unbroken are their ranks. They commonly dis- 

 appear, like several other birds, at uncertain times of the year, 

 and undoubtedly go to some place where their favorite food is 

 abundant during the time that they are absent from one's own 

 neighborhood. In May they usually become common, and ap- 

 pear in smaller companies in almost all parts of the open 

 country. These flocks finally become divided into pairs, who 

 build their nests when nearly all our other birds have hatched 

 the eggs of their first or even second broods. The Cherry- 

 birds, in summer, sometimes imitate the habits of the fly- 

 catchers (to whom they are, perhaps, more closely allied than 

 is now admitted), and I have seen them perform graceful evo- 

 lutions in the air, in the manner of the King-birds. As their 

 name indicates, they sometimes eat cherries, but much less 

 often than is commonly supposed by certain farmers, who are 

 but too ready to discharge their guns at these birds, in spite 

 of their usefulness in destroying caterpillars. 



