56 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 
father’s corn crib last winter.) They also are carnivorous, and the 
frozen carcasses of animais exposed in the woods is sure to be 
regularly visited by jays in the wintry frost and snows. These birds 
are amenable to treatment at the hand of an educator. They can 
be taught what seem to be apish tricks, and in many accomplish- 
ments, vocal and otherwise, as will repay the trainer for his pains 
and trouble, as do the parrot, canary or bullfinch species. 
As we came near the hemlock thicket where the gentians were 
growing, a flock of yellow finches flew from tree to tree, and ere 
long the terror-stricken cries of an individual finch were heard, as if 
proceeding from one in the throes of death. Probably a maraud- 
ing shrike, of which tribe numerous individuals are now perpetually 
scouring the locality, had seized one of the twitterers and was 
fulfilling its sanguinary instincts. 
The flocks of the yellow finch and of the pine siskin frequent 
the borders of our thickets where cone bearing trees are found, and 
make frequent visits to weedy corners or woods or gardens where 
tall weeds of the compositae or chenopodiaceae order show above the 
snows of winter time. 
But of all the feathered tribe none make themselves so familiar 
with the haunts of men as the chicadees. These are now beginning 
to come to the front and revisiting their accustomed food resorts of 
last February. Their fearlessness and confidence in the friendship 
of man is one of their singular traits. They are well known in 
times of intense frost and deep snow to linger around the lumber- 
man’s camp, and we are told of their alighting on the shoulder or 
knee of the woodcutter when eating his a/ fresco dinner ; and will 
even seize a piece of cheese or fat pork when offered to them, as one 
lumberman said to the undersigned, “nearly as large as the bird 
itself.” The crashing sound of a falling tree in the forest in winter 
time is suggestive to these and other hardy species of birds of an 
abundant supply of food, for among the debris of broken branches, 
denuded bark and decaying wood a varied assortment of coleopter- 
ous chrysalid and larval sustenance is provided, and in the winter 
morning no sooner has the woodcutter struck a few blows of the far- 
resounding axe than specimens of the nut hatch, downy woodpecker 
or chicadee will make their voices heard in the immediate vicinity. 
On turning to go homeward the gentians were found according to 
