104 GREEN TRAILS AND UPLAND PASTURES 



made food scarcer for other birds made it easier for them 

 to obtain. Perhaps that is one reason they are multi- 

 plying so fast. Many of their tracks led down to the 

 spring, which was still open in the centre a black hole 

 in the expanse of snow. Evidently they had gone down 

 to drink or bathe. 



This same deep snow and accompanying cold brought 

 down to New England and New York from the north 

 flocks upon flocks of the rare pine grosbeaks, large, 

 beautiful birds which move silently save for occasional 

 little soft notes, almost like the pleasant squeaking of a 

 tiny hinge. They grew very tame as winter pro- 

 gressed, and, from a discovery of the wild barberry 

 bushes in the woods and abandoned clearings, moved in 

 to feed upon the barberry hedges lining the drives of 

 summer estates, and then actually to the bushes in 

 front of occupied houses. On one of our walks we found 

 a barberry bush surrounded apparently by blood-stains 

 on the snow, but sitting on a topmost spray was the 

 cause. A young grosbeak, not yet arrived at the dig- 

 nity of red plumage, his bosom feathers puffed out by 

 the cold wind, held a barberry in his bill, and was work- 

 ing it back and forth, sideways, rolling off the skin, 

 evidently to get at the seeds and pulp. Presently he 

 dropped the skin on the snow, emitted a gentle squeak 

 or two, hopped to a new spray, and, quite unmindful of 

 us, began on another. The snow had no terrors for him 

 so long as that bush held out. 



