THE FOREST 183 



tersperses with notes far from pleasing — har^h 

 and rasping ones — and a pessimist, having 

 these uppermost in his mind, would put tiown the 

 song as a very undesirable one. It is well to 

 pass lightly over the unpleasant things of life 

 and lay stress on the pleasing. 



Audubon believed that these discordant cries 

 of the shrike were imitations of birds in distress 

 and that they served to beguile small birds 

 within its reach. This idea comes down from 

 the Middle Ages, for one Dame Juliana Berners 

 denounced for the same reason the European 

 gray shrike and stigmatized it as "an ungrateful! 

 subtell fowle." 



The redpolls and siskins, the crossbills both red 

 and white-winged and the pine grosbeak have 

 all visited my forest from the north, and, on one 

 occasion, I was so fortunate as to find several 

 evening grosbeaks, that splendid yellow and black 

 bird of the northwest, feasting on the seeds of 

 the box elder. Of late years this accidental 

 winter visitor has become almost a regular visi- 

 tor, and he is particularly fond of the seeds of 

 the box elder or ash-leaved maple. This tree 



