FOUR RED BIRDS. 133 



Just as our seasons are becoming more and more 

 evenly divided into six months of heat and six of cold, 

 so the birds, as a whole, are likewise prolonging their 

 stay beyond the fonr months that seems formerly to 

 have been the limit of their sojourn north. 



Tanagers and apple-orchards are as much associated 

 as bees and flowers. That they are found in scores of 

 other places is, of course, true ; but, when elsewhere, 

 they seem quite out of place. Where they tarried in 

 Indian times we can only conjecture, but probably in 

 the wild fruit and nut trees that were often planted ex- 

 tensively near village sites. Indeed, the walnut seems 

 to be a favorite tree with this bird, and I have knowl- 

 edge of one being occupied for several summers by a 

 pair of tanagers, the nest being always on the same 

 branch. They regularly built a new nest, and re- 

 moved every trace of the one they had occupied during 

 the previous summer. To see how far their attachment 

 to a particular limb of the tree extended, I removed it 

 after the birds had left us, and in the following spring 

 discovered that, by so doing, I had lost the company of 

 one pair of birds. They left the neighborhood in dis- 

 gust. 



Curiously enough, these birds do not appear to have 

 given rise to any weather-proverbs. At least, I have 

 not been able to find any reference to them in the scores 

 of " sayings " I have gathered. This is the more strange, 

 as these birds do appear to have a fancy for cloudy weath- 

 er, and sing more frequently then than when it is clear. 

 Dull, doubtful days in summer, when the question of 

 a picnic is to be decided, are those when the crude 



