AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGY. 



123 





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■Fig. 2. 



Photo from life. 



CONTENTMENT. 



ing time they go about in flocks of from six to twenty individuals. 

 The most marked peculiarity about them is their silence. A flock of 

 fifteen or twenty will perch in a wild cherry tree for an hour or more 

 and not a sound will indicate their presence except perhaps the occa- 

 sional falling of a cherry which one of them has accidently dropped. 

 It seems incredible that so large and sociable a body of birds could 

 maintain so strict a silence; it resembles a gathering of deaf mutes, and 

 such in fact they might almost be called for their nasal hissing or twit- 

 tering whistle is hardly loud enough to be deemed a note. 



Cedar birds have a roving disposition especially in winter. This 

 period they pass in the large cedar swamps where they subsist on berries 

 and seeds. During continued intervals of mild weather they will ven- 

 ture out into the more open country and be seen about settlements. I 

 am inclined to think that the birds that winter along the northern bor- 

 ders of the United States are mostly some that have come from farther 

 north and that those which breed here in the summer migrate a little 

 farther south. They remain in flocks until the beginning of the breed- 



