Birds of Massachusetts. 109 
and grateful welcome ; their plaintive whistle at that 
time, resembling the words phe-be, with rising and 
falling inflections, is one of the sweetest sounds 
which announce the morning of the year. 
The eggs of the chicadee are laid in holes in trees, 
whick they sometimes excavate with their bills, 
without the formality of preparing a nest. They are 
from six to twelve in number, white, with specks of 
brown red. The young, as soon as fledged, resemble 
the parents, and associate with them, in a cheerful 
party, running over trees in all directions, so ne- 
times hanging with the head downward, and leaving 
no crevice unexplored where insects may possibly 
harbor. 
The Hunson’s B:x Tirmovuse, Parus Hudsonicus, 
which has been hitherto u k-own in Massachusetts, 
has been found by S. Eliot Greene, Esq. near his 
house in Brookline. 
-. "The CEDAR BIRD, Bombycilla Carolinensis, is well 
known, o: as some would say, notorious, and not so 
generally welcome as one might suppose, who re- 
garded only the silken delicacy of its plumage, and 
the insatiable appetite with which it gathers cater- 
pillars, beetles and cankerworms from the trees. 
The reason is, that in the season of fruit, they repay 
themselves by eating cherries, pears, and other luxu- 
ries with so much relish and so little discretion, 
that they have been known to gorge themselves 
to death. When they alight upon a tree, they are 
so crowded together that many may be killed by a 
single shot. They immediately spread themselves 
